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Can a Nighthawk R7000 become a repeater to an Aircard 785 (canal 19)
Trying to setup a Nighthawk R7000 as Repeater behind an Aircard 785, I hit the following difficulties.
The 4G Aircard uses channel 19, but the Nighthawk choice of channel is limited to range 1-13 (2.4GHz b/g/n), or 36-40-44-48 (5GHz a/n/ac).
The support page "How do I configure my Nighthawk router as a wireless repeater?" says: item 4. "Select Wireless and verify that the wireless settings match the base unit exactly".
Any idea if the Aircard can be set with a different channel without losing the benefit of 4G ?
Re: Can a Nighthawk R7000 become a repeater to an Aircard 785 (canal 19)
Dear TheEther, As I could not progress, and Windows 10 kept refusing the communication with the Nighthawk, I finally went to the Technical support, because the Windows diagnostic messages being in French, I thought this would be simpler.
Here is what Technical suport says:
"In your case, I inform you that the configuration you want is not possible, the Aircard does not have the function of WDS that is necessary to make the communication with the R7000. Also, the WDS function only works with WEP encryption (which limits the speed to 54mbps). Finally, the wifi Repeater function is being deleted on newer versions of firmware. "
Re: Can a Nighthawk R7000 become a repeater to an Aircard 785 (canal 19)
Thank you for your reply.
You are right indeed, I found later that channel 19 appears in the 4G settings, but there are also elsewhere the same channels 1-13 and 36-40-44-48 to be chosen from (in the Principal WiFi and Guest WiFi settings).
This being said, when I set the Aircard to channel 13 for instance, and copy the settings in the Nighthawk "Wireless" page, it still does not work.
1) In the "Wireless" page, should I specify in the Nighthawk the same SSID as the Aircard, or may the Nighthawk keep its own identity?
2) When it comes to specifiying an IP address, in the "Repeater" page, may I chose any IP in the range proposed by the Aircard, or should I first find out the IP attributed to the Nighthawk in my network. If the latter is correct, how do I find out, since the Aircard is not yet connected to the Nighthawk (at this stage, the Nighthawk is only connected to my PC with an Ethernet cable).
I have tried with several IP addresses, all in the same subset as the base station, but different from the LAN address of the base station, but when I hit the Apply button, it always lands to a locked page, where the Nighthawk says something like "the specified document could not be found", and I have to reset the Nighthawk to factory settings, and start all over again.
Or should I perhaps then disconnect the Ethernet cable between Nighthawk and PC, and see if on reboot, the Nighthawk becomes visible with a full WiFi connection, including Internet?
I suspect I should try this next time, unless you have this experience already.
Re: Can a Nighthawk R7000 become a repeater to an Aircard 785 (canal 19)
You need to set up the R7000 with nothing connected to it except a computer plugged into one of its LAN ports.
1) You should specify the same SSID as the Aircard.. The R7000 manual states that wireless security must be disabled on both ends. IMO, this makes the R7000's repeater function useless. Using no security is unsafe. My suggestion: Get things working without security, then try enabling security on both ends. If things don't work with security enabled, then you may have to resort to using 3rd party firmware with support for security. BTW, I noticed that Netgear recently disabled the repeater function on a different model, citing security vulnerabilities. 2) You should use an IP address that is outside the range managed by the Aircard. This will avoid the possibility that the Aircard assigns the same address to another device.
You also need enter the Aircard's MAC address into the repeater settings on the R7000.
Re: Can a Nighthawk R7000 become a repeater to an Aircard 785 (canal 19)
Thank you again for your help. We are almost there.
After hitting the "Apply" button, the system starts updating the router with the new parameters, but the process aborts, claiming "insufficient time to handle the request".
Do you know where this timing authorization can be adjusted: the updating process is indeed quite slow, about 30 seconds, after the progress bar appears and starts filling...
Re: Can a Nighthawk R7000 become a repeater to an Aircard 785 (canal 19)
After you hit the Apply button, the R7000 should have switched to repeater mode. If you had also assigned it a new IP address, then your browser session to the R7000 will have been orphaned. This would eventually appear as a timeout on your browser. Try connecting to the R7000's new IP address.
Re: Can a Nighthawk R7000 become a repeater to an Aircard 785 (canal 19)
Dear TheEther, As I could not progress, and Windows 10 kept refusing the communication with the Nighthawk, I finally went to the Technical support, because the Windows diagnostic messages being in French, I thought this would be simpler.
Here is what Technical suport says:
"In your case, I inform you that the configuration you want is not possible, the Aircard does not have the function of WDS that is necessary to make the communication with the R7000. Also, the WDS function only works with WEP encryption (which limits the speed to 54mbps). Finally, the wifi Repeater function is being deleted on newer versions of firmware. "
