Question New Mesh System; New Problems

Aug 5, 2022
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Hello everybody. Thanks in advance for any advice.

I recently upgraded to a LinkSys Velop Wifi6 system (AX4200) to cover my house better. At the same time, I changed my Netgear Cable Modem/Router (C6250) to bridging mode, thinking that it did not make sense to have both the modem and the Velop acting as a router and I wanted to avoid multiple WiFi networks floating around. However, since then my connection has been flaky. Loading webpages can sometimes fail for example. Or if I go to YouTube it can sometimes take a few attempts to get a video to load. Once it loads, it runs great (which makes me think of a problem establishing the initial connection).

Am I doing this wrong? Do I need to the cable modem to run as a router too? On other websites I have read that this can sometimes cause issues with Mesh systems? E.g.:

What are the disadvantages of bridge mode?
A network bridge does not issue a public IP address, rather a MAC address, which could be an issue with a mesh Wi-Fi system, forcing you to brush up on advanced settings and port forwarding rules

I know the basics of networking but I am far from a guru - any help would be appreciated. The cable provider is Xfinity, if that matters.

Thanks,
Hans

EDIT: I should add that when websites fail to load, I often get a DNS error message.
 
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You likely installed you mesh system incorrectly.

I would start with just the main router with no remote nodes. You can put the netgear into bridge mode if you want. I would actually test it both ways since the only downside is having a second NAT in the path. You want to first start with a ethernet cable into the new router and see if that is stable.

Next try wifi off the new router. It should more or less work as good as the netgear. There is very little difference in the coverage between wifi routers. In this case you could run both the netgear and the new device as routers but set the wifi radios to different SSID. You can then directly compare the wifi performance.

After this it is likely the so called Mesh. Mesh is a bunch of marketing crap it is just a different for of repeater in most cases. Key here is placement. You can't just stick the box in the room that gets poor signal. Sure you will get a stronger signal from the remote unit to your end device but the actual data between the router and the remote unit will be just as bad as it was when your end device connected directly. It needs to be placed where it gets a strong signal from the main router and can still provide a strong signal to the remote device. This may not exist if the problem is a floor or wall absorbing the signals. Although this mesh systems has a extra radio for backhaul which is better it now has the problem that it is using every single radio channel on the 5g band which guarantees you overlap all your neighbors interfering signals.

Also of note the form of wifi6 on this device is close to worthless. It can not use the 160mhz radio bands which is what makes wifi6 faster. Then again most end devices can not use 160mhz either which is why we are going to have to wait until wifi6e gets more common to get the full benefit or wifi6 technology.

All depends, I suspect for devices that directly connect to the main router you will no improvement in speed. For devices that connect to the remote unit if you get it placed properly should be faster than trying to connect to the main unit. Then again it depends on how weak the signal is from the main router. Many times a weak signal from the main router will outperform a strong signal that has to go though a mesh/repeater. You are in effect sending all the data 2 times in your house.
 
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Aug 5, 2022
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Ok that was a lot to absorb. Let me try to break this down.

  1. The main TV in the house is wired directly into the Velop main node. It seems to not have any issues. (This is curious now that I think about it, since that would seem to imply a wireless issue, which is the whole reason I bought this thing.)
  2. I figured "testing it both ways" was a sensible starting point. I can also hide the netgear SSIDs if that annoys me. I just don't understand why that would make a difference. In that regard I am networking illiterate.
  3. In general I think I have placed the nodes in sensible places with the caveat that I'm limited somewhat by outlet location and not wanting a node awkwardly in the middle of a room. I should note, however, that I have this connection issue on my phone even if I am sitting the living room next to the "main" node.
  4. 6e units were more expensive, and I don't think I have any equipment that could even take advantage. (this was already more $$$ than I wanted to spend lol)
Thanks for your help!
 
That is the problem with 6E currently. Most times I just recommend people buy the older 802.11ac wifi5 stuff since wifi6 has so many limitations.

Do you have the option to connect the remote node via ethernet cable, you could run it as a simple AP then. My normal recommendation is to use MoCA first if you have coax to remote rooms, then powerline networks and very last mesh systems when there is no other solution.
 
Aug 5, 2022
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That is the problem with 6E currently. Most times I just recommend people buy the older 802.11ac wifi5 stuff since wifi6 has so many limitations.

Do you have the option to connect the remote node via ethernet cable, you could run it as a simple AP then. My normal recommendation is to use MoCA first if you have coax to remote rooms, then powerline networks and very last mesh systems when there is no other solution.

Not feasible to run cable. I have a stupidly large house (which was the reason for the upgrade - the netgear struggled to get around the whole place). I had a cheap-o repeater that kind of helped but not enough.

Acronym overload - what is MoCA?
 
Media over coax I think. If you have the coax cables you can get full gigabit speeds. I think there are models that can run 2.5g. If you have coax in mulitple rooms they all share the same bandwidth but the limit would be the gigabit port you plug between your router and the moca unit.
If you want wifi in the remote room you could use one of your mesh units as a AP. Normally I recommend people buy a cheap router to plug into the remote moca unit and run that as a AP.
 
Aug 5, 2022
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Media over coax I think. If you have the coax cables you can get full gigabit speeds. I think there are models that can run 2.5g. If you have coax in mulitple rooms they all share the same bandwidth but the limit would be the gigabit port you plug between your router and the moca unit.
If you want wifi in the remote room you could use one of your mesh units as a AP. Normally I recommend people buy a cheap router to plug into the remote moca unit and run that as a AP.

Thanks again - there are some coax cables in the house that I might be able to use; I can check on that. In the interim I'll switch the "router mode" back on at the netgear and see if that helps. Gonna be annoying since setting bridge mode turned off the wifi so now I have to plug in manually to access the dang thing. None of my laptops have ethernet ports anymore so ugh.
 
Aug 5, 2022
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Thanks folks. Got the NetGear back into router mode and that seems to be helping (time will tell). I don't quite understand that honestly. Was the velop omehow struggling with DNS maybe? I don't know enough to discern that (maybe I had to point the velop to a specific one?)

I like this coax idea and it might work for at least one room in the house - I need to get up in the attic though and figure out what cable is what - not pleasant to do at the moment here in Houston lol.
 
The easy way to test it is to see if the cable modem works in the room. Generally for moca you just want everything connected together.

What you do is put a splitter in cable going to the cable modem and hook one moca unit there and then hook the remote unit to the wall.

I am assuming that you do not have a dedicated coax going to the modem from the ISP.
 
If you run router behind router you need to be sure they use different networks on there corresponding lan. The mesh router should complain if it gets a WAN ip that matches it lan subnet

If you are running the mesh network as AP..ie you hooked to a lan port then netgear router will run your network and the mesh will mostly be invisible
 
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I thought I was interpreting your lingo correctly but maybe not. I think you're saying I need to set the linksys to assign a different DHCP range?

Edit: Yes, the Linksys is connected via a LAN port to the Netgear Modem/Router.
 
You are running your linksys as a AP when you do that. If this was a simple router I would recommend you just set it to AP mode but mesh things I don't know if you set that option.

What you need to do is change the IP so it does not conflict. If the netgear is using say 192.168.1.1 then set the linksys to 192.168.1.250 or something else outside the dhcp pool. You then want to disable the DHCP service on the linksys.
 
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You are running your linksys as a AP when you do that. If this was a simple router I would recommend you just set it to AP mode but mesh things I don't know if you set that option.

What you need to do is change the IP so it does not conflict. If the netgear is using say 192.168.1.1 then set the linksys to 192.168.1.250 or something else outside the dhcp pool. You then want to disable the DHCP service on the linksys.

Ok I get it except for what AP means. Access Point?
 
Aug 5, 2022
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Bill: Thanks a ton. I did not change anything about the IPs yet or turn off DHCP but it seems to be working. If I run into issues I'll know where to look though.

I really appreciate your help. :)