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WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

CakalangFufu
Aspirant

WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

EX8000 will never connect with my RAX40 router's 5 GHz network.

 

Both Router and Extender's Firmwares are up to date.

Connected with the tech support,

Reset the extender settings,

Changing router's 5Ghz band channel,

Retried WPS connection setup between extender and router several times,

Tried "Smart Setup" - the extender could detect the router's 5GHz just find but in the end of the setup it will say "400 Bad Request!".

 

The extender never want to connect with the router's 5GHz band...

Model: EX8000|AC3000 Nighthawk X6S Tri Band WiFi Mesh Extender, RAX40|Nighthawk AX4 4-Stream WiFi Router
Message 1 of 16
Razor512
Prodigy

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

Which channel is your RAX40 set to? The EX8000 needs to use the upper part of the 5GHz band for best reliability, and must not use DFS channels.

 

You may need to set your router to 80MHz channel width to unlock channels such as channel 149. (which will not be available on 160MHz which the EX8000 does not use)

 

Also try using the IP address of the EX8000 and not the DNS address which does not work as reliably.

Message 2 of 16
CakalangFufu
Aspirant

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router


@Razor512 wrote:

Which channel is your RAX40 set to? The EX8000 needs to use the upper part of the 5GHz band for best reliability, and must not use DFS channels.


Thanks for the reply.
Hi following the tech support suggestion, he asked me to set my RAX40 5Ghz Channel to 164 but in my RAX40 settings the highest channel is only 128.

 

 

You may need to set your router to 80MHz channel width to unlock channels such as channel 149. (which will not be available on 160MHz which the EX8000 does not use)

How do I unlock the 80MHz channel width?

Also, currently all of my EX8000 channel options are all DFS channel.

 

 


Also try using the IP address of the EX8000 and not the DNS address which does not work as reliably.


Using the IP Adress to what?

(Sorry newbie here)

Message 3 of 16
Razor512
Prodigy

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

For netgear routers often they will determine channel width based on max PHY rate, thus you may have to choose a lower rate in the mode setting, e.g., if it is set to 2400Mbps, then you will have to selectthe 2nd fastest speed.

 

Though this also meanns that if you are using an 802.11ax WiFi adapter such as the Intel AX200, then you will not get the full AX performance and your real world throughput will top out at around 900Mbps. If you are using 802.11ac clients then you will not notice any throughput reduction from selecting the second highest PHY rate, since it will still be at the max rate supported by 802.11ac.

 

As for DFS channels, it is harder to connect to them since you cannot actively probe, because of this, if the beacon from the AP is sent over the DFS channel then you will only see the network when a beakon transmission happens to coenside with the timings for when the client deivce allocates ait time to listen for the beacon, and if the timing does not match up, nothing is seen until the next beacon and listen window comes up.

 

As for the DNS address, if you have any custom DNS server specified, sometimes it will cause the mywifiext type addresses to not redirect properly to the EX8000. If that is the case for you, then the best solution is to just use the IP address of the extender instead, and use that for the initial setup, but if the addres works reliably then you can continue with it (especially if you don't have a custom DNS server set, and are not using something like a VPN where they may not always properly do a split tunned to avoid sending local traffic over the tunnel.

 

Overall, if you get a chance this is a summary of the changes to test.

 

  • Select the 2nd highest speed in the mode for the 5GHz radio
  • Set the channel of the router to 149
  • Apply those changes and do a fresh setup of the EX8000.
  • Also make sure the router is using WPA2-Personal [AES]
Message 4 of 16
Razor512
Prodigy

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

Hmm seems my reply may not have gone through, not sure why.

 

But as a troubleshooting step, try the following.

 

  • Set the mode for the 5GHz radio from "Up to 2400 Mbps" to "Up to 1200 Mbps"
  • Then set the channel to 149 if allowed in your location.
  • Make sure the security is set to WPA2 Personal
  • Then perform a fresh setup of the EX8000 and see if it will proprly connect to the 5GHz band.

 

Message 5 of 16
CakalangFufu
Aspirant

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

Thank you, @Razor512 


  • Set the mode for the 5GHz radio from "Up to 2400 Mbps" to "Up to 1200 Mbps"

It has been like this from the beginning.

 

 


  • Then set the channel to 149 if allowed in your location.

I set it to the highest channel 128

 

 


  • Make sure the security is set to WPA2 Personal
  • Then perform a fresh setup of the EX8000 and see if it will proprly connect to the 5GHz band.

  • The security is WPA2-PSK [AES]
  • Still not resolved the issue.
Message 6 of 16
Razor512
Prodigy

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

Hmm it may seem that those upper channels are not available in your region.

Are you able to use channel 36?

 

This should allow for the 2 stream 5GHz radio to be used instead of the 4 stream radio.

 

Message 7 of 16
CakalangFufu
Aspirant

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router


@Razor512 wrote:

Hmm it may seem that those upper channels are not available in your region.

Are you able to use channel 36?

 

This should allow for the 2 stream 5GHz radio to be used instead of the 4 stream radio.

 


Thanks again, @Razor512 .

I tried using channel 36 and reset the the Extender and did fresh setup.

But it still the smae, connecting only to the router's 2.4GHz and when I do the Smart Setup in the end will only get "400 Bad Request!"

 

I think I'm going to give up this product and replace my router with a stronger one or reposition it.

 

Thanks a lot for your kind advices.

Message 8 of 16
Razor512
Prodigy

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

Before you do that, which region are you in? (trying to determine if you are using a US or EU model of the router and extender).

 

This will also help determine if there is a UI bug where it is not actually in its 80MHz channel width mode.

 

Message 9 of 16
CakalangFufu
Aspirant

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

I’m in Japan.
Message 10 of 16
Razor512
Prodigy

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

Hmm it seems that those upper band channels are not available to you.

 

I wonder after completing the setup wizard on the EX8000, if you head to the router page (often 192.168.1.1 ) does the EX8000 show up in the device list (attached deices)?

 

Also if it does, what happens if you try to head directly to the IP address of the EX8000 as listed in the device list on the router?

 

Also if you are able to reach the status page, then you may be able to gather more information relating to what is going wrong on the 5GHz band.

Message 11 of 16
CakalangFufu
Aspirant

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router


@Razor512 wrote:

Hmm it seems that those upper band channels are not available to you.

 

I wonder after completing the setup wizard on the EX8000, if you head to the router page (often 192.168.1.1 ) does the EX8000 show up in the device list (attached deices)?

 

Also if it does, what happens if you try to head directly to the IP address of the EX8000 as listed in the device list on the router?

 

Also if you are able to reach the status page, then you may be able to gather more information relating to what is going wrong on the 5GHz band.


It shows up in my RAX40 router's attached device list, says it's conected through 2.4GHz band.

One time the EX8000 was connected to 2 (two) 2.4GHz connection at the same time, but never to 5GHz Robot LOL

 

I can always see the Exender status from the IP Address 192.168.1.16.

 

I've been trying different setups (SMART SETUP) a try to look for troubleshooting even with NETGEAR tech support via chat and sending them my screenshots, nothing really works.

(Here I also attached my screen shot, in my first post I also attached my screenshot)

Message 12 of 16
Razor512
Prodigy

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

In this situation, it would be useful to check the debug page, (replacing the /status.htm with /debug.htm), and starting a capture, then trying to get the EX8000 to connect to the 5GHz band, then when it fails, head back to the debug page, and save the debug log.

You could then unzip it and skim through the various logs and check if it lists any issues with the 5GHz band, as it will likely not be good to share the debug logs on a forum since they will contain any passwords you have set on the EX8000, though the logs are in a relatively easy to read fashion that can make it easier to spot errors and share just the error if needed.

 

The error will likely be in either or both the wireless-log1.txt, and the console-log1.txt file.  (the wireless log will contain all wifi related passwords as well as the max addresses and PHY rates of all connected devices in addition to any errors, thus it is best not to share it publically.)

 

The console-log is much less likely to contain any more sensitive info, though it is always best to look through and redact any if you ever need to share it publicly. Other than that, as part of your own troubleshooting, they can help is determining how it is failing to connect to the 5GHz band.

 

Message 13 of 16
CakalangFufu
Aspirant

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

http://192.168.1.16/debug.htm

Replacing the "/status.htm" with "/debug.htm" will only return error400.

(Screenshot attached)

 

Message 14 of 16
Razor512
Prodigy

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

Are you able to try a different browser other than Edge? (e.g., firefox or chrome)?

It is just strange how those pages are not loading and giving that error.

 

Message 15 of 16
CakalangFufu
Aspirant

Re: WiFi Extender EX8000 cannot connect to 5Ghz band of Nighthawk AX4 (RAX40) Router

Yes, I tried Edge just to make sure because up until now I have been using Chrome and the page didn’t load as well.
Message 16 of 16
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