EX7000 Wifi Range Extender Dropping out after upgrade latest Firmware

[Shyrage]

Im no expert either.  Im taking however the orginal so called fixed was never actually fixed.  I'm not sure what update I am on but the last time I updated was about two years ago I think.  I pretty much gave up on netgear as they have with us.  It was in their hopes from what it seems that we moved on to a newer product.....

[drdantru]

I gave up long ago. I got a new extender and it has been flawless. I loved the EX7000 until I “updated” it. I reacted odd causing my router to shut off. I see to reason to risk other equipment on this unsupported extender. Best to move on.

[JeroenVH]

Hi Everyone,
So today is the first day my extender has not dropped out.
I am still on the wretched V1.0.1.84_1.0.148 but what I did was assign the extender a static IP in my Nighthawk router settings.
I was reading a post from a network technician the other day and he said that this is quite an important step to take when creating networks with extenders so I thought why not give that a shot.
So far so good, I will try and keep this forum updated in case things go wrong again so lets see what happens.
Note assigning a static IP in the extender settings didn't do anything for me, I had to assign it in the main router's settings.

Kind regards,
Jeroen

[JeroenVH]

So, small update:
Everything went well for 3 days until my wife connected to the extender by cable with her mac book from work, thats when it kicked the bucket again.
Not sure what that is about but I'm wondering if giving her mac book a static IP might help, going to try it later.

On the bright side, my desktop which I connect to the extender with via cable had a flawless connection for the whole weekend since I gave the extender a static IP in my router settings.

Kind regards,
J

[gliu]

The extender appears to still have intermittent DHCP issue. When this occurrs, any new device that tries get IP via extender be it wired/wireless wont be able to get IP and hence, access your home network. Note when this occurs, other devices that are connected to extender still able to ping my ISP gateway so unicast traffic is still ok and my extender is still connected to main AP. So issue is specifically somehwere in DHCP DORA process that is not working on the extender.   When this occurs, I walk within range of my main AP and connect to it instead. I can then get IP and everything ok. Next thing I did was power on/off extender only,  and connected to it instead. Now also able get IP.

Next time you have this issue, try adding static IP to your device and see if you can access internet. This will confirm if your seeing same issue. Suggest you also set DHCP reservation to a long time so you dont get kick out when it tries to renewal after expiry while this issue is present in latest firmware

[JeroenVH]

Hi Gliu,

Thank you for all the tips, I will give them a shot.
Things worked ok for a while but things shifted for the worse with multiple shutdowns a day now, this thing is driving me insane.
Do you set the static IP and DHCP reservation on your main router or on the extender?

Often when I restart the extender it refuses to connect to the 5G network and I have to set it up all over again.

I noticed that when things go south I cannot connect to my main router anymore but can still connect to my extender via its IP address in browser.
I'm wondering what that is about.

Kind regards,
J

[JeroenVH]

Lol, great, Netgear apparently does not give an option to extend my DHCP lease time... on my $300 router.
How is this possible??? What in the world are they thinking...
This is becoming a rather frustrating experience making me want to switch to another brand completely

[gliu]

I have old linksys AP and installed DD-WRT on it. The GUI has tons more options can play around with. U can consider using it if your AP is supported

[gliu]

When u setup extender, pretty sure there is no option to set static IP. So instead I set the DHCP reservation for the extender MAC address to always use provide same IP. I noted earlier comment by somene else his netgear not able to set lease time. I dont have issue on my main AP which is old Linksys

See comments inline

Often when I restart the extender it refuses to connect to the 5G network and I have to set it up all over again.

>>I assume you bave resonable signal receive from main AP on your 5G band. If not, that could be your problem. My extender can connect on 5G band but signal noise ratio is very bad. my extender is on third floor of a house which is double brick. Unfortunately only way get reliable connection is to use 2.4 band for the backhaul. Understand this decrease speed for users connected to extender but thats only option I have besides going down mesh path.

I noticed that when things go south I cannot connect to my main router anymore but can still connect to my extender via its IP address in browser.
I'm wondering what that is about.

>>that is expected. Its only your extender that has lost its connection to the main AP

Only other issue can see besides the DHCP I have is if u have good signal to main AP, scan frequency and make sure no one close by is using the same band. If needed, change the band used or can try using 2.4G band "choose spectrum no one close by using" and see if you get a more stable connection between extender and main AP. 2.4G band is quite crowded and not many to choose from. Just see option helps

[JeroenVH]

Hey Gliu,

Thanks for all the info.
Yes I have pretty decent 5G connection to my router, the signal strenght is around 70% and is capable to deliver me 350mbps when connected.
I forgot to mention but yes the signal frequencies I make my router use are ones that are not used in my immediate surroundings to have almost no interference.
This weekend I spent some time handing out static IP's to all the devices in the house to make sure there is no problem with that but now the extender chose to just completely ignore that and hand out its own ID's.
Router:
02:0F:B5:5B:5D:E5 - 192.168.1.3
02:0F:B5:CF:54:A2 - 192.168.1.4
Extender:
02:0F:B5:5B:5D:E5 - 192.168.1.20
02:0F:B5:CF:54:A2 - 192.168.1.15

I have tried resetting the extender, resetting to factory, restarting PC's, renewing IP's via CMD,... nothing helps.
They are stuck on those IP adresses now.

The interesting part is that this only happens to wired in devices, the wifi devices received the right IP address set from router straight away when I reconnect them to the extender.

[JeroenVH]

Nevermind, the wifi extender just does not give a rats *ss and assigns any IP address it wants to wifi devices too.
I feel this is gonna be a never ending headache...

[gliu]

I dont think the extender "in extender mode" can actually hand out IP. It doesnt act as a DHCP server. Have u double confirmed the IP is handed out by extender or your Main AP. As an example, when I go to my main AP, I can see in the clients list all IP address AP has handed out.

Assuming your extender is handling out IP as you say, just make sure the pool its providing isnt the same one your main AP is providing else u will you may get duplicate IP. You prob dont want to have 2 devices in same subnet handling out the same pool IP address. In enterprise environment you typically have 2 DHCP servers like windows. The IP given is always the 1st DHCP server that responds and the other server will see this.

Lastly, there is an option to set a static IP on extender so that extender is always using same IP. Essentially same as what I am doing on main AP providing the same lease to extender.

[VS228]

So I've downgraded to EX7000-V1.0.0.68_1.0.128. And I've got 2 networks on my main router - one for 2.4 GHz and the other for 5 GHz. The range extender networks have the same network SSIDs and passwords (WiFi keys).

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@gliu wrote:

Hello

Range extender recently upgraded to latest release version EX7000-V1.0.1.78_1.0.140. Now the extender keeps on dropping off usually for around few seconds. The signal received from Linksys AP is showing 4 bars on channel 6,2.4ghz.

On my phone connected to same ssid, I can see the signal noise ratio is -68dbm. The next closests AP on channel 6 is -80dbm. I tried moving to other channels like 1,11 but still same issue

My PC is connected extender ethernet LAN cable. I have ping running to Linksys AP.

ie PC--LAN---Extender------wifi ssid 2.4-------Linksys AP

I also have my phone connected to linksys AP on same ssid that extender is connected on

ie mobile--------------wifi ssid 2.4-------------Linksys AP

My phone also has ping running to linksys AP. When the ping on PC drops, I can see extender has lost connection to linksys AP. However, at same time, my mobile is still connected. No ping lost.

This seems to be extender issue and it has only happen after upgrade. I tried downloading to older release but extender doesnt allow install of older release. It simply cant install. So I have reverted back to latest.

I dont have support contract. how to get netgear look into their latest firmware. I have had extender for 2 years now without issue.

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@gliu wrote:

Hello

Range extender recently upgraded to latest release version EX7000-V1.0.1.78_1.0.140. Now the extender keeps on dropping off usually for around few seconds. The signal received from Linksys AP is showing 4 bars on channel 6,2.4ghz.

On my phone connected to same ssid, I can see the signal noise ratio is -68dbm. The next closests AP on channel 6 is -80dbm. I tried moving to other channels like 1,11 but still same issue

My PC is connected extender ethernet LAN cable. I have ping running to Linksys AP.

ie PC--LAN---Extender------wifi ssid 2.4-------Linksys AP

I also have my phone connected to linksys AP on same ssid that extender is connected on

ie mobile--------------wifi ssid 2.4-------------Linksys AP

My phone also has ping running to linksys AP. When the ping on PC drops, I can see extender has lost connection to linksys AP. However, at same time, my mobile is still connected. No ping lost.

This seems to be extender issue and it has only happen after upgrade. I tried downloading to older release but extender doesnt allow install of older release. It simply cant install. So I have reverted back to latest.

I dont have support contract. how to get netgear look into their latest firmware. I have had extender for 2 years now without issue.

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and password as the main router. This has worked the best for me.

[VS228]

Hello All

Anyone tried the new firmware 1.0.1.86 - Hot Fix. I am using 1.0.0.68_1.0.128, since all newer firmwares have signal drop issues.

Cheers

VS

[VS228]

Installed the new Firmware Version 1.0.1.86 - Hot Fix this morning and it's working beautifully so far. Will keep everyone posted if any problems are encountered.

VS  

[sloanish]

What is your setup?

I tried it wirelessly with just 2G extended and still had drop and slow issues.

[VS228]

I think the trick is to avoid using the One WiFi mesh feature.

I have a 2.4GHz and a 5GHz network (with 2 different names) on the main router. The Netgear extends both keeping the same names and passwords for both networks. 

[RJ_NZ]

So I had an email from Netgear to upgrade the software on my Wi-fi range extender which I did and it immediately went into intermittent faliures. I'm not going through that pain again. Reverted back to EX7000-V1.0.0.66_1.0.126 and it's running fine again. I really wish they would sort the issues out as I want to apply the security patches.

FYI setup is Apple Airport running one SSID on 2.4 & 5G, EX7000 extending to two different SSID's (one on 2.4 and one on 5G - both different to the Apple SSID). This works well on the above firmware but fails miserably on all upgrades that I have tried since.