So, I've had the Ex7000 for about 3 or 4 years now in my home with an Arris Surfboard wifi router. Since I first installed it, it has been nearly useless. Initially NetGear replaced it but that never solved the problem and I've been out of any service relationship with Netgear for this extender so getting help is a challenge.
It's been so bad that everything in my house just connects to the guest wifi coming straight off my router because we can never get Internet service when connected through the extender. I'm in a new house, now and I'm back to messing with this extender. Upon setting it up, it works fabulously for about 8-12 hours, and then any device that connects to it is able to reach the extender, but there is no Internet connectivity. Something is bad with the connection between the extender and my router.
My current setup is as a pure extender, not an access point. To verify it's not an issue with multiple locations in the house broadcasting the same SSID, I now have everything set up on their own SSIDs - the router has two SSIDs, we'll call them RTR2, RTR5 for their various speeds, and the extender has two SSIDS, EXT2 and EXT5.
The router and extender are on the top floor of a 3 level home. From the bottom floor I can connect to and and surf from the router on any device, even from the most remote opposite ends of the house. The router is on the top level of the home, very near the router, so I'm positive it is receiving a stellar signal. I can even connect to my router directly from across the street - great signal strength.
No matter what I do, from factory resets on both devices and using the most basic setup routines on both devices, to starting from scratch and doing methodical configurations in all various modes, the extender will work great for several hours and then eventually devices that connect to it can no longer access the Internet.
I know enough about networking and wifi to be able to do some deep diving but I'm no network expert. Here's how the situation "feels" to me: It seems the extender obtains an IP from the router and works fine. But at some point, perhaps during the lease renewal or a sudden drop in connectivity, it loses that connection to the router and upon attempting to renew its lease or reestablish that connection, there is a conflict. Almost as if the router thinks it's still connected so it doesn't make any further attempts to reconnect it. Like the router says, "I dunno, extender, looks like you're already connected to me, so I dunno why you're asking for another connection. I'm going to ignore you.'
My firmware is up to date. My most important devices all have static IPs setup in the router. My extender has a static IP set up in the router as well (x.x.x.253). I thought maybe that would solve the problem of trying to request a new IP from the router. but this morning I woke up to a paperweight again.
A side note - in the router when I view the currently-connected reserved IPv4 devices, the extender always shows up as * RESERVED INACTIVE * even when it's connected. Other devices do that from time to time so I figure it's a router display issue with the software. Or perhaps the extender is connecting via IPv6 and therefore isn't showing up on the reserved IPv4 list> But looking at the extender sats it seems to be connected to its assigned IP address,so I dunno.
I understand in rare circumstances you may have to reboot a device, but once a month is about the most I would find acceptable. Once a day is ludicrous and more than that is a joke. No one at NetGear wants to help without money.
What could possibly be happening? I'm studying for the Network+ right now - partially because of the trouble I've had with this stupid, likely simple, networking issue. Can anyone help me understand what could be happening?
Model: EX7000|AC1900 Nighthawk WiFi Range Extender
Re: My Nighthawk Extender has failed for years - [UPDATE]
[Edit] - when I look at my connection settings on my PC when connected to the extender, there is no information populated in the DHCP section. So I am not being assigned an IP, gateway, etc from the extender upon connecting to it.
I went ahead and manually set static IP information for this wifi connection on my computer and now I am connected. So what I'm seeing now appears to be: although the extender and my PC have static IPs reserved in the router IPv4 table, when the extender is connected to the router, and my PC requests an IP from the router (via the extender), something during the handoff of the reserved IP address is not making it from the router -> extender -> PC. Either router is not handing the correct info to the extender, or the extender is failing to pass on the IP info to the client. Only by forcing my PC to request a specific IP, and having that same IP also reserved on the router, did it connect.
While this worked for one device, not all devices can have static IPs reserved on both ends, either because their MAC address randomizes on every connection, or because they are temporary guests, for example. Plus, I have a limited number of reserved IP on the router, which exceeds the number of connected devices in my home.
So now the problem can be narrowed down a little more - after several hours
1) devices already connected to the extender seem to lose their assigned IP/gateway information and cannot retrieve a new lease from the extender 2) any device attempting to make a fresh connection once the extender stops working, is unable to acquire an IP address via DHCP through the extender.
I'm going through and bumping as many of these recent threads as I can. NETGEAR support seems to be almost nonexistent in these threads, and I've posts relating to internet connectivity issues for this specific extender going back at least to 2018. To have no fix for something that's been an issue for over 2 years is pretty ridiculous.
Model: EX7000|AC1900 Nighthawk WiFi Range Extender
Well, here's what I've done. It feels like a band aid but it's working.
Since the issue appears to be a DHCP issue, any device in my home that allows me to manually set up a static IP I set up manually.
I created a spreadsheet and made sure each device doesn't share an IP with another, and I reserved them all in a specific IP range, for example, 192.168.0.50 thru 75. I manually input those static ip addresses into my devices for all SSIDS in my wifi network. So router 2.5ghz, 5ghz, and extender 2.5 and 5 ghz. This way dhcp is entirely removed from the equation as much as possible.
My router DHCP is then set up to hand out IPs between x.x.x.100 and x.x.x.150, so my static IPs aren't in the available DHCP range. This leaves some IPs available for devices to be added that simply cannot use a static ip.
Dhcp lease times in my router are set for about 8 hours. It's my understanding that about halfway through a lease, most devices will go ahead and renew their lease time, so this gets a device through the day. At night, while we're asleep, the leases expire and stay gone long enough that the router disposes of the lease info completely, so when the device connects again it shouldn't have an IP conflict.
I couldn't seem to set up a static ip on the extender itself, so instead I reserved a DHCP IP for it.
With this setup there are very few devices in my home that require DHCP - I think only 2 wifi-enabled televisions - and they get new leases every day. Everything else is statically assigned. Guests use the guest wifi which doesn't use the extender.
So for now I've had almost a month with really no problems. I did have to reboot the extender once but that's better than multiple times per day. I wish I understand where the DHCP issue was coming in to play. It was definitely an IP conflict where the router thought the device MAC was still connected and so couldn't reconnect it if it got dropped for some reason.
