I have a 2-story home (~3500 sqft). Internet comes in upstairs, wifi signal from upstairs is spotty downstairs. When I had DSL, I purchased a Nighthawk D7000 (March 2017) and added the EX8000 in February 2018. Enabled one wifi name. Everything working quite well--even when I switched from DSL to Fiber. Because I use MAC filtering, the Fiber Tech and I decided that I would use the fiber box to provide internet to the D7000. The fiber box has the wifi disabled. This setup has been working well for several years.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed my Samsung BluRay DVD player was turning on--all on its own. Research indicated that the DVD player had probably lost its internet connection...checking showed that to be the case. DVD player accesses internet through the EX8000 (it can get a signal from the D7000 but the wifi signal is not very strong). Looking at the devices list on the D7000, the DVD player showed up but only dashes were listed in the IP column for it. Other wifi connected devices downstairs were showing the same thing.
I rebooted the EX8000. Devices seemed to connect to the internet but within a couple of hours they were exhibiting the same "symptoms" and showing the dashes in the IP address column on the D7000. I turned off the EX8000 and rebooted the D7000 and then brought the EX8000 up. Repeat of the problems.
I did a factory reset on the EX8000 and did a fresh setup. Again within a couple of hours the problems returned.
Each time the downstairs devices lost the internet, I was able to check that the fiber connection to the internet was active and had good quality and speed. Devices upstairs (strong signals from the D7000) had no problems. I have disconnected the EX8000 and unplugged the DVD player. Other downstairs wireless devices are okay with the D7000 wifi signal--as long as I don't want to stream videos or play internet games.
It doesn't seem right that the EX8000 would "fail" in less than 3.5 years. Before I did the factory reset on the EX8000, I checked for a firmware update and the result was that no firmware update was available.
So, is there something else to try with the EX8000?
If it is beyond help, I would appreciate advice...(1) purchase a replacement exender or (2) should I consider replacing the D7000 with a new router and "satellite"/extender. What I like about the EX8000--one wifi name, 4 ethernet ports, USB port, 2.4GHz and 5GHz. What I like about the D7000--guest network, MAC filtering, USB ports, ethernet ports, one wifi name, 2.4 & 5 GHz, etc. There may be other features on both units, but these are the ones that readily come to mind.
Model: EX8000|AC3000 Nighthawk X6S Tri Band WiFi Mesh Extender
