X6 8000 and EX7000 ac1900 extenders stability issues and temperamental
HI all!
I have nightmares about my network... i feel like Alice, trapped, help hostage by my devices...
I am trying to cover a mid-sized home with my network which has grown over the years. It seems to be a nightmare to keep on top of and i seem to have a lot of issues with devices and if i ever need to reboot and of my netgear devices its not exaggerating to say it get take me days to get things sorted again.. i dont know if there is something stupid ive done thats causing this sensitivity to change or what.
I was hoping i could share my setup here and folks could let me know if something is amiss or if i have a problem with something. i'm particularly interested in the router-extender relationship as i was hoping the Nighthawk setup would give me more visability of what was going on but the router doesnt see the extenders at all from the app... just connected devices.
So, my setup is as follows:
BT Openreach modem
Netgear x6 8000 Router
Connected to the router is a TP link SG1024d gigabit switch, nothing else.
I have 2 EX7000 ac1900 extenders connected to the switch by ethernet cable, one in the loft and one downstairs.
Everything i can hardwire to the network i have, so there are only mobile devices, one tv, one printer and a host of wifi sockets and plugs using the wifi.
It seems to be the wifi that gives me the most grief... although i do have occassions where web browsers wont show me pages as if they dont exiist... but a few 'refresh' presses and i'll be in!? Problem 1 that is i suppose.
I have 2 wifi ssids on the router... one just if i want wifi access to the router direct and a guest network. no specific radio settings. On the extenders i have the same ssid name to create an expanded network... each extender is setup as an access point and has a static IP. Both extenders have 2.4 & 5 GHz turned on but have been given different radio channels to avoid interferrence.
The extenders are particularly tempremental. For instance i have a wifi printer that behaves great once connected but if it ever needs reconnecting it has to be done via the wps button on the nearby extender... this seems to kick everything off this extender and is a right pain to get working again. I cannot use the smart setup on the extenders as this will never sucessfully complete.
Am i doing the right thing with theradio channels and having a different ssid on the router (to avoid radio conflict) or should this be unnessesary?
The last couple of days i've been trying to connect a amazon smart plug to the network after a reset... it just wont have it when i'm trying to conndct it to the extender's ssid... but it will connect to the router's... how could this be? i'm convinced the issues are related to the router-extender's relationship, ip issuing or something...
Any help or suggestions? They'd be most gratefully received!
I have 2 wifi ssids on the router... one just if i want wifi access to the router direct and a guest network. no specific radio settings. On the extenders i have the same ssid name to create an expanded network... each extender is setup as an access point and has a static IP. Both extenders have 2.4 & 5 GHz turned on but have been given different radio channels to avoid interferrence.
You seem to have created a bit of a "wifi spaghetti".
I fear that you may be confusing things with the idea that you can use "the same ssid name to create an expanded network".
The only way to create a single, seamless wifi network is to use a Mesh system. (That's the whole idea of Mesh technology.) This relies on communication and cooperation between the individual wifi sources to create the single network that seems to be your ambition.
Using the same SSID on multiple devices is a recipe for problems. As you move around the place, the wifi clients still have to negotiate a fresh link with the nearest wifi source. If everything has the same SSID, wifi clients can get confused. Using different SSIDs shouldn't cause connection problems, after all the clients still have to negotiate a fresh connection. Connecting to different SSIDs could even be quicker.
That might also make it easier to add IoT toys to the network. Most IoT stuff works on 2.4 GHz. The problem there is that the routines that their makers create for connecting will throw a wobbly if you are using a device connected to 5GHz. Temporarily disabling 5 GHz can help.
BT Openreach modem
Which BT modem is that? The last tome I looked, BT supplied only modem/router boxes and that do not allow users to put them into modem only (bridge) mode. So you must have dome something else to get the R8000 (the correct model number) to play nicely with BT's box. If not your are likely end up in double NAT territory:
Re: X6 8000 and EX7000 ac1900 extenders stability issues and temperamental
Hi... many thanks for the detailed reply!
I have one of the old HG612 BT modems that I've installed new firmware on to allow it to work with the router. Quite a common hack I believe. So you would recommend I simply have a different SSID on all 3 wifi devices then and give up with the single? As long as devices will 'let go' of the one they are connected to in favour of a better signal I suppose that would be fine. The only thing is the IoT devices... at the moment I set those up all to access the same SSID... not sure how they'll like being connected to different WiFi.
I had just assumed this is how things are done... I've been responsible for (although by no means knowledgeable) IT in my last couple of jobs and both places have various access points all kicking out the same SSID?
Re: X6 8000 and EX7000 ac1900 extenders stability issues and temperamental
FUrthermore... will having several ssid's with various devices connected to each not cause issues managing them... smart plugs for instance maybe connected to different networks and the device i'm accessing them on connected to another different one?
FUrthermore... will having several ssid's with various devices connected to each not cause issues managing them... smart plugs for instance maybe connected to different networks and the device i'm accessing them on connected to another different one?
See above:
Using the same SSID on multiple devices is a recipe for problems. As you move around the place, the wifi clients still have to negotiate a fresh link with the nearest wifi source. If everything has the same SSID, wifi clients can get confused. Using different SSIDs shouldn't cause connection problems, after all the clients still have to negotiate a fresh connection. Connecting to different SSIDs could even be quicker.
