EAX80

[Stylinguy]

I have the EAX80 WiFi 6 Mesh Extender. When I first got it, I had in the list of WiFi on my phone, 2g_ext & 5G_ext. I no longer see those to choose from. I have a fire stick wired into the extender which is working fine, but not getting the 2G_ext & 5G_ext in WiFi list. Please help!

[plemans]

do you have it setup in mesh mode? (onewifi)
If so, it uses the same ssid as the router so it won't show up as a seperate network. 

[Stylinguy]

I have no clue! Lol. I don’t know much about routers & extenders to even know how that could have changed. I actually just got a new router also. The Nighthawk RAX200 tri band. But I haven’t seen the _ext in my phones WiFi list for a while now. Do you know how you can change between it being set to mesh? Is it better just having it set to mesh?? Meaning, will it still use whatever is closest or strongest signal?

[plemans]

I prefer mesh mode as its simpler. Devices will band steer between 2.4ghz and the 5ghz band and switch from extender back to the router as needed. 

If you just got the RAX200, did you have to reinstall the EAX80? 

Did you set it up using wps? If so, the default setup is using mesh/onessid. 

You can log into the RAX's attached devices page and get the ip address or view if the extender is attached. 

[Stylinguy]

I didn’t have to reinstall the extender. And now that I think about it, we had switched from optimum to Altice, (which we didn’t like), then back to optimum. I think when we first switched, that’s when I no longer had the _ext In my list of WiFi. And I had to reset my extender at that point because it was a different password & such. This time setting up the new router I used my same WiFi name and password so I didn’t have to go through changing everything in the house. (I have a lot of smart home stuff.).

[Stylinguy]

When it’s in mesh mode, how do you know if it’s even switching between the 2? I can’t ask NETGEAR these questions, because my trial period for the extender ran out. So can’t get help from them. Not to mention I never found their help very useful

[plemans]

to know if its switching between 2.4ghz/5ghz you can check the devices connection status.

It should tell you 2.4/5

I've found that it takes a little bit until the router/extender learn which device belongs on which band.