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xrm570 Wired Backhaul and other issues

Rickster434
Tutor

xrm570 Wired Backhaul and other issues

Hey Guys and Gals,

Background:

I have both the XR500 and the EX7700 in the mesh kit and I have been plagued with issues. I have a 400Mbps down 20 Mbps up connection through cable. Everytime I experienced and issue, I bypassed the router and had no issues. And so I now know this is on the router/extender side. I have been getting constant disconnects throughout the day and when I try to reconnect, the device (no matter what type of device it is) can see the network but cannot get an IP address. This happens even when the device has a static ip in dumaos. 

 

 

Issue 1: Poor performance.

 Just last night I did my 3rd factory reset. Everything was working fine at first (with this last reset) when the extender was in the same room. I moved the extender to my perfered location. This location cuts my speed in half (from 400Mbps to 200Mbps). I figured since I have been having such a hard time with this combo that I should just leave it alone and deal with the performance drop. I then tried to change the location time zone of both routers and got a warning that the NTP server could not be reached with the NETGEAR NTP server. I troubleshot a little bit and even put in the pool ntp servers. The XR500 could not reach that NTP server either. So I factory reset again. Now the extender constantly has issues with speed (50Mbps or lower down.) I constantly see that my google mini is disconnected. And when I try to reconnect it cannot get an IP.

 

Issue 2: Wired Backhaul.

I thought my solution was going to be running wired backhaul to the extender. I have not figured out how to make this work. With my old mesh system (luma which is now out of buisness which is why i wanted something awesome like the nighthawk routers) I had no issues with the same wires running between the hub and nodes. But when I connect ethernet to the extender I get an alternating orange/white light for the router connection light (the first one from left to right on the EX7700). I have to say that the first time I ran wired backhaul to the extender before the factory resets, it worked just fine for as long as I tested it. (about 20 minutes). I had 400 down and 20 up just like when I was right beside the router. But alas, I cannot get this to work anymore. Everytime I plug in RJ45 I get the good ole orange/white blinky light and no device can get an IP.

 

Issue 3: Nighthawk Mobile APP

I have never been able to see my connected devices from the app.

 

Issue 4: No Rocket League Support

I mean seriously, this game is like super dependent on good ping/qos/packetscheduling. Is it not possible to add this to the list of games? I tried to add the known ports (7000-9000 udp) to the traffic prioritization list but it never detects it. Geofiltering for this game would be AWESOME too. Can we get some help with that? I ended up just adding 1-65535 tcp/udp on my computer and just toggling never/when high priority traffic is detected for this. But this was one of the main features I wanted specifically for rocket league. 😞  

 

 

I have almost had it with this setup and am about to return it unless I can get some help. So here are my questions:

 

1. What am I doing wrong with wired backhaul? I have onewifiname setup on, smart connect on, and sync from router on. I have both the 2.4 and 5g networks enabled with the same ssid and pw.

 

2. What is up with the NTP server? Is this the source of my problems? I am scared to change the time zone to my time zone for fear of another factory reset and 30 minutes of my day wasted again.

 

3. Why can't the app see my devices? Also why does my extender have a grey "light" by it in the app even though I know I am connected to the extender because of signal strength?

 

4. Rocket league help/advice?

 

Please help...

Ricky 

 

Model: XRM570|Nighthawk Pro Gaming Router and Mesh WiFi System
Message 1 of 5

Accepted Solutions
Rickster434
Tutor

Re: xrm570 Wired Backhaul and other issues

Alright XRM570 users.. I have some good news for you. I have fixed my issues. I called tech support and they didn't have the training to help me. Unfortunately, Netgear doesn't think that efficiency in diagnosing problems is a problem, and so tech support and I wasted several hours trying to figure this out. 

 

The solution was simple and in the manual.

(users that just want answers... skip to the ---- line.. first I want to send a message to Netgear)

So these are the problems I see with Netgear's documentation and lack of technical support process and advisment:

1. Lack of taking the time at the beginning of the call to fully understand the issues and diagnose the problem using simple techniques and troubleshooting documentation that is already available. Example: After about a 2 hour phone call with techsupport: restarting the router, the extender, factory reseting both devices, moving things around, trying to reset them again and finally thinking the problem was solved... I tried to connect two devices to my extender. One forcing a 5ghz signal, and the other a 2.4ghz signal. The 5 ghz signal would process sometimes and the 2.4ghz would simply fail to connect. I decided to restart the extender. I noticed that the lights were acting funky. The green light was flashing. Well, after 10 minutes of it trying to connect I gave up and began my research.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The firmware was corrupt. Doh. How do I fix that when I can't connect to the thing in the first place? Well I had to do a lot of digging and finally came upon this article which explained how to use a tftp client to upload the firmware. There is no guidance in this article on how to actually open a tftp connection, but I have done this a bunch before when I ran a server farm. 

Here is the article I discovered:

https://kb.netgear.com/000059634/How-to-upload-firmware-to-a-NETGEAR-router-using-Windows-TFTP

To use it however, you need to download a tftp CLIENT from somewhere(search google for tftp client and look for the first link by tftp-server.com) and make sure that the executible for the tftp client and your firmware are in the same location. You  also need to know how to use cd in the command prompt in order to be able to navigate to your specified folder where these two files are located (tftp executable and image file)

 

Okay so the next problem.. I got my extender up and running again. Found the IP address in the network manager and found the ip of the extender... because the website that you suggest to use that is not permited to be posted in this forum (mywifi3xt.net (minus leet speak)) just doesn't work guys... I logged into the extender and started applying what I know about things and got wired back haul to work:

 

For wired backhaul you must set the EX7700 in AP mode, and you must use smart connect. Make sure your ssid and password for your wifi network matches that of your XR500 and run through the prompts. Of course you have to have an ethernet connection directly to the router to make this all work. So Yes. Success. 4 full hours of uninterupted QOS, geofilter and everything else that I can do with the awesome XR500 with a now fully supported ethernet backhaul connection to the extender from the router.  Please ask questions if you don't understand. I will be more than happy to help as it seems that I am the only one that knows how to implement a simple networking concept as wired backhaul on the ex7700.

 

Goodnight.

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Message 4 of 5

All Replies
Netduma-Fraser
NetDuma Partner

Re: xrm570 Wired Backhaul and other issues

Issue 1: Sounds like you might have a semi dead spot in your home that kills the signal in that area. Also for the time, its highly unlikely to affect you but disable daylight savings, set the time zone then reenable dls and it should save.
Issue 2: You may need to refer to the extender manual on that one or make a ticket here direct with Netgear http://support.netgear.com/
Issue 3: Suggest a ticket as well for this
Issue 4: I believe we looked at the game and you basically select the region in game so unless there are multiple servers within that region (are there?) then may not be able to Geo-Filter it. For Prioritization keep the source ports at their default and just change the destination and it will work.
Message 2 of 5
Rickster434
Tutor

Re: xrm570 Wired Backhaul and other issues

Issue 1: I was able to have the LUMA connect here without any issues. The extender is in the same EXACT location as the LUMA was.

Issue 2: I have created a ticket and so far I have had no help.

Issue 3: I have not created a ticket for this issue but I will after I solve the above issues.

Issue 4: Yes there are a lot of servers on both the east and west coast NA(>20 that I have seen). There are also a bunch of servers in EU and ASIA. Geofilter for this game would be a huge deal. 

Model: XRM570|Nighthawk Pro Gaming Router and Mesh WiFi System
Message 3 of 5
Rickster434
Tutor

Re: xrm570 Wired Backhaul and other issues

Alright XRM570 users.. I have some good news for you. I have fixed my issues. I called tech support and they didn't have the training to help me. Unfortunately, Netgear doesn't think that efficiency in diagnosing problems is a problem, and so tech support and I wasted several hours trying to figure this out. 

 

The solution was simple and in the manual.

(users that just want answers... skip to the ---- line.. first I want to send a message to Netgear)

So these are the problems I see with Netgear's documentation and lack of technical support process and advisment:

1. Lack of taking the time at the beginning of the call to fully understand the issues and diagnose the problem using simple techniques and troubleshooting documentation that is already available. Example: After about a 2 hour phone call with techsupport: restarting the router, the extender, factory reseting both devices, moving things around, trying to reset them again and finally thinking the problem was solved... I tried to connect two devices to my extender. One forcing a 5ghz signal, and the other a 2.4ghz signal. The 5 ghz signal would process sometimes and the 2.4ghz would simply fail to connect. I decided to restart the extender. I noticed that the lights were acting funky. The green light was flashing. Well, after 10 minutes of it trying to connect I gave up and began my research.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The firmware was corrupt. Doh. How do I fix that when I can't connect to the thing in the first place? Well I had to do a lot of digging and finally came upon this article which explained how to use a tftp client to upload the firmware. There is no guidance in this article on how to actually open a tftp connection, but I have done this a bunch before when I ran a server farm. 

Here is the article I discovered:

https://kb.netgear.com/000059634/How-to-upload-firmware-to-a-NETGEAR-router-using-Windows-TFTP

To use it however, you need to download a tftp CLIENT from somewhere(search google for tftp client and look for the first link by tftp-server.com) and make sure that the executible for the tftp client and your firmware are in the same location. You  also need to know how to use cd in the command prompt in order to be able to navigate to your specified folder where these two files are located (tftp executable and image file)

 

Okay so the next problem.. I got my extender up and running again. Found the IP address in the network manager and found the ip of the extender... because the website that you suggest to use that is not permited to be posted in this forum (mywifi3xt.net (minus leet speak)) just doesn't work guys... I logged into the extender and started applying what I know about things and got wired back haul to work:

 

For wired backhaul you must set the EX7700 in AP mode, and you must use smart connect. Make sure your ssid and password for your wifi network matches that of your XR500 and run through the prompts. Of course you have to have an ethernet connection directly to the router to make this all work. So Yes. Success. 4 full hours of uninterupted QOS, geofilter and everything else that I can do with the awesome XR500 with a now fully supported ethernet backhaul connection to the extender from the router.  Please ask questions if you don't understand. I will be more than happy to help as it seems that I am the only one that knows how to implement a simple networking concept as wired backhaul on the ex7700.

 

Goodnight.

Message 4 of 5
Netduma-Fraser
NetDuma Partner

Re: xrm570 Wired Backhaul and other issues

Well done for figuring it out and thank you for posting the solution, glad it's all working now.
Message 5 of 5
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