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hi. I have a R7000 AC1900 Nighthawk wireless router that I would like to use as just a Layer 2 switch, no wireless, no routing, just Layer 2 to downstream devices connecting them upstream to my ISP gateway. I have a 2nd Nighthawk that is a WAP only. is there a way to do this?
also, if I assign a static IP to my 3rd Nighthawk (yeah, someone was selling 3x of them online at too good a deal to pass up!) on the /24 that my ISP gateway manages, will it perform Layer 2 & wireless on that segment?
I will recheck. pretty sure I checked that before. I'm pretty sure I just applied the AP mode change to #2 last night, and when it broke my session, I just put it away for the night.
just now reviewed & retried this. I can see from the ISP router that it has IP 192.168.1.169. it does not reply to ping from my laptop at 192.168.1.112/24, nor does the web UI respond from my laptop to that address via either HTTP or HTTPS using Chrome.
I'm open to more suggestions... I could reset it & rebuild it - would only lose the time invested.
the address pool runs from 192.168.1.64 to 253. available addresses 1 thru 63 are excluded.
initially I had connected this Nighthawk to the router by its WAN port, thinking "use your uplink to go upstream". when I saw your reply, I moved the uplink to a LAN port on the Nighthawk but there is no change - web UI still times out, as do pings.
no, have not tried that. I'll have to reset it so I can get back into it to do anything like that. but I can try that - set a static on it before moving it to AP mode.
so, I did reset the router, started over from the beginning.
assigned a static IP 192.168.1.10 in the excluded range - worked fine.
I think it reloaded after setting the static, and I was able to get back in.
then I noticed in the Advanced config pages/tabs that Bridged mode supports the LAN switch and wireless, so I thought that "ok, so maybe I try changing to Bridged mode 1st, let it reload if it wants, and then turn off the radio(s) and see how that works."
so, I try that, but as soon as I change from Router to Bridged mode & it reloads - I am unable to get back in.
I disconnected this 'Hawk #2 from the internets - nada.
grabbed my laptop adapter & connected to a LAN port - still nothing.
assigned my laptop to a static 192.168.1.20/24 so I'm on the same subnet as the 'Hawk - still nothing.
now I also noticed that when I changed to Bridged mode, the Netgear wireless SSID no longer appeared to be broadcasting. it was no longer listed when I looked at what SSIDs were broadcast for selection.
it almost looks like this thing, in order to be manageable, it HAS TO BE left as a router. changing to any other mode breaks access to the management page.
so, that turns out to be an acceptable solution - allowed it to stay in router mode, preserved management via web UI, disabling DHCP. I had to settle for disabling SSID broadcast & setting a long complex auth key on the wireless (I couldn't find how to turn radios off.)
and this device (router/switch/whatever) is uplinked via one of its LAN ports.
being that there are only 3 remaining may prove suboptimal down the road. but at this point, it works. I accomplished the objective of effectively turning down the radios, taking advantage of the 4 port switch & delaying purchase of another for a bit.
@FURRYe38 - Thank you VERY much for your persistent contributions!
