Man oh man, I have so many issues with my EAX80 / AX6000 Nighthawk Mesh Extender: 1. http://mywifiext.local/ loads, but clicking on the button "New Extender Setup" does nothing on Firefox, Chrome, or Edge on my Windows PC despite being hardwired to it with Wifi turned off. The button also does nothing on my Samsung S10. 2. OK, so I was able to figure out how to switch to it in the Nighthawk app on my phone, but there is nowhere to update the firmware there. I have no idea if the firmware needs updated, as I can't even verify what firmware version is running. 3. While the EAX80 adds connectivty where there used to be less, devices don't disconnect from it, meaning where my router is is now essentially a dead zone. This is ridiculous given my router is a Nighthawk X4S.
Thank you for the reply. Your idea about in-app updates works for my router, but not for the Mesh Extender I am asking about. If you switch products to the extender and then follow the same steps, there are no "Router Settings" - just "WiFi settings."
I'm a bit desperate for a solution - I just tried upgrading my router to a Nighthawk X6S / AC4000 Tri-band to see if I can just ditch the EAX80 all together, but no dice. I need to either return that router and swap my whole system out for a dedicated mesh network (and I will leave the Netgear brand if I do this), or I need to get this darn EAX80 to actually work, not make my network worse.
My #3 from my original post is what I am talking about. I need my devices to connect to the nearest device, not just the EAX80 the entire time. Crazy that its wireless signal from a different floor on a different side of the house overpowers the X6S on the same floor! This even happens when the EAX is two floors away!
You're right, as I wasn't in physical proximity to my eax80, I had to extrapolate a bit.
If you use the android app, you can find the current IP address of your eax80 under network overview and tapping on the eax80 repeater icon. This will show you the MAC address and local IPv4 address of your EAX80, a webinterface is listening on this IP address and you can access it using the username and password you assigned to to your device earlier.
If you happen to be wirelessly connected to the BSSID of your EAX80 - or have connected a notebook via ethernet to one of its four ethernet ports, you can also use
http: <slash><slash> mywifiext <dot> net
"Firmware Update" is in the left menu frame, third entry from the top.
Thank you for the reply, although unfortunately none of this helps.
>
you can also use
http: <slash><slash> mywifiext <dot> net
Please see the first point of my original post; this website does not work for me in Friefox, Chrome, or Edge on either of my two computers tested, or on my phone for Firefox mobile or Chrome mobile.
> you can find the current IP address of your eax80 under network overview and tapping on the eax80 repeater icon. This will show you the MAC address and local IPv4 address of your EAX80 Yeah, the default 192.168.1.250 - but this takes me to the same broken page above.
Please see the attached screenshot for what I mean by broken. This is what I see when I click the only button on the page - New Extender Setup - on any device, in any browser - no change at all (except for a minor URL change to http://mywifiext.local/ra_check_TC.htm). This is with Adblock+ disabled.
Of course in trying different things, I did manage to just get a change. Despite having wireless turned off and being plugged directly into the Extender, if I go to the mywifiext URL, instead of 192.168.1.250, I get "You are not connected to your extender's WiFi network."
See attached screenshot. I then tried to turn wireless on and reconnect, but same issue.
My devices all connect to the extender, not to the main router, even when the signal is stronger/better from the main router. This means that my devices will prefer a 2 bar signal from the extender instead of max from the router. This occurs even if I turn wifi off and on again on the device.
Ideas to fix: 1. Upgrade firmware of extender (but that's impossible for me to do so). 2. Upgrade router (DONE - I upgraded from X4S to X6S and it didn't help).
At this point you might want to try a factory reset, using the recessed button on the back, in order to start up fresh.
I've been using all of those browsers on linux and windows to use the eax80's webinterface (which I prefer over the app) in recent months, using all updates released within that time frame. The webinterface has always worked well for me. If that doesn't work, you might want to check your browser settings, potential filtering plugins (ad-filters) or online virus scanners, which might interfere (but shouldn't).
So I tried again, but this time, when I got to the point it said "check here before continuing installation" I loaded mywifiext and I updated firmware that way. And now I seem to be in and firmware has been updated (although I had to log out and log back in to connect the extended to the internet).
We'll see if this helps - thank you for bearing with me!
See attached screenshot, but any idea why the 5GHz band is limited to 54 MBPS and is greyed out?
Update: Whelp, I spoke too soon. Can you not touch your router settings ever after setting up an extender? I went in to my main router settings to see if somehow the speed limit was lowered there, but no, it was all over 1K MBPS. I don't have speeds that high anymore, so I lowered them between 300-400 MBPS. And after that, bam! Extender could no longer be connected to.
Update2: So I reset the extender, still couldn't get mywifiext to respond, but 192.168.1.250 eventually did. For a minute. Then it stopped responding, but now mywifiext responds (this is all on a Windows laptop, primarily using Firefox). There were some weird settings about 5GHz not working at first, but now it seems to be working again, albeit still limited at 54 MBPS and not allowing me to boost that limitation. So hoping I can increase that, somehow...
I will say though, in regards to my main problem, it seems like turning off Wifi6 (now that I have access to settings) resolved my primary issue!
It's still early and I need to do more testing, but I'm very excited to have made progress! Still, I want to understand this super low 5GHz MBPS limit that I cannot change for some reason.
After changing the wireless channel on your main router (either manually or automatically after receiving a DFS event), it might a while for the repeater to follow suit (in the order of ~3-5 minutes). But yes, you definitely can change your wireless settings. Only if you do change ESSID/ PSK, you will have to reconfigure your repeater as well. In practice this means resetting the repeater.
Personally I can achieve 1000BASE-T linespeed over the EAX80 (the limit of its ethernet ports). In case of problems in the 5 GHz band, it might help to configure a non-DFS channel (ch36-ch48) for testing.
