@kennyrogersjr 

 

No, they are not going to do anything about it as they say it's a V1 limitation.

this issue has been mentioned in 2018 and never resolved

 

Kevin_Z wrote

@dalpihe  @kennyrogersjr 

 

Hi, have you both referred to adenhaan's suggestions to disable the SmartIP feature on the C2300v1, which should stop the frequent DHCP request from the network? Please check his suggestions on #11.

@Kevin_Z 

 

Wow! Great idea! Maybe, and bear with me on this one, you could not waste my time telling me to read a reply on a post I made. That would be great. Yeah? 

 

For anyone else aspiring to "not help", but came for useful information, disabling SmartIP is a must when you move to a static IP, I mean, is there a way to have SmartIP and be static at the same time? (The answer is no.) This is tiresome. Especially when you've troubleshot the same router with over 50 factory resets and over 50 different configs relayed it to the community and "tech support" with not-so-much as a head nod in your direction. The Archer C2300 V1 is completely useless as a dual-band wifi router due to the fact that NO MATTER the configuration, dhcp events will fill up your log and cripple your 5Ghz capability over time. (For the record, the dhcp events happen in all states.)

 

Thanks, again @dalpihe for the update on the V2 fixes!

 

I have exactly the same problem with a C2300 v1 running the latest firmware (2.0.3 which is quite old, from 09/2018).

While in Access Point mode, it keeps sending DHCP requests every ˜10 seconds even if the IP address is static.

Changing IP address from Static to Dynamic and then back to Static solves the problem, but it is temporary. Rebooting the router the issue appears again and the device starts flooding the network with DHCP requests again.

Making the IP Dynamic and reserving it on the main router does have the same effect (temporarily solves the problem until the next reboot/power cycle).

 

This is clearly a defect in the firmware, something that TP-Link should fix, but a more recent firmware is only available for the “v2” and the “v1” seems to be abandoned.

 

Shame on you TP-Link to treat your products and customers like this.

 

PS: I am crossposting this on purpose since TP-Link is ignoring this issue since this product was launched - see also another threads about the this exact same (and unsolved) problem at:

 

https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/105793

https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/156045

https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/183706 (this topic)

https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/98158

@dme3 

@Romantico 

I have devised a solution to using the C2300 V1 as an AP. Not perfect, but functional.

 

My 'solution' is to set the C2300 in Router mode, and then manually configure it to function as an AP:

• set the WAN interface to Static, and give it a dummy IP address that is not part of your existing networking plan. I used 10.10.10.10/24

• note that you don't connect any cables to the WAN interface. It's left disconnected. You'll connect the C2300 to your LAN with one of its 4 LAN interfaces.

• set the Default Gateway to 192.168.1.1

• set the DNS to 8.8.8.8 (Google's DNS).

• on the DHCP Server page, turn DHCP off.  <-- this is very important. You don't want the C2300 acting as another DHCP server on your LAN.

• on the LAN page, assign it an unused IP from your existing subnet. I used 192.168.1.247, subnet 255.255.255.0. Make sure that the address you pick is not within the scope of the DHCP server on your gateway router.

• once you've set the LAN IP, you'll lose connectivity from your PC/Mac to the C2300, since its LAN address has changed from what it started with (192.168.0.1). You have to manually configure your Mac/PC with a static IP in the same subnet (in my case, 192.168.1.1/24). And then reconnect to the C2300 at its new IP (eg 192.168.1.247)  so you can continue with the configuration.

• Set the C2300 time zone to your current time zone. Enable DST if appropriate.

• Optional: In order to obtain network time, the C2300 needs to be able to connect to the internet to (a) resolve the IP of the specified NTP server (such as time.nist.gov or pool.ntp.org), and (b) to connect to the time server and obtain network time. But it doesn't know how to do so. There's no internet connection through the WAN interface.  My workaround was to specify a local NTP server**.  My gateway router is a Ubiquity ER-X EdgeRouter and it provides NTP service on my LAN.  So I configured the C2300 to use 192.168.1.249 for NTP. (that's the address of the ER-X). The C2300 then obtains correct time from the ER-X. Any error messages logged to the C2300 syslog get correct time stamps, and the time-of-day access controls also work.

• for good measure, I disabled a bunch of ancillary services in the C2300 that I don't want/need: Printer sharing, Media sharing, Samba, ftp file share, USB sharing, UPnP. All I want it to do is be an Access Point.

 

Having done all the above, the final step is to configure the wireless settings with the SSIDs, passwords, etc that you want. Instead of Auto for security mode, I specified AES. Some of my iOS devices complained if the radio uses TKIP mode.

For better security, I disabled WPS.

For the 2.4 GHz radio, I specified 802.11n only.  I don't have any old -b or -g devices.  However, I found that the C2300 ignores this setting. According to WiFi Explorer, its 2.4GHz radio still operates in b/g/n mode. 

 

Having done all the above, connect one of the LAN ports on the C2300 to your LAN. Leave the WAN port disconnected.

 

My C2300-as-AP has been in service for a few days now with no problems encountered. The only functional limitation is that it's unable to check for new firmware releases from TP-Link since it doesn't know how to connect to the internet.  But it's a moot point: TP-Link hasn't rev'd the firmware for this product since 2018. The likelyhood that there will ever be a new release for it is approx the square root of -1.

 

I'll be swapping out the C2300 with a proper AP in the near future - one from a company that designs quality products, tests them thoroughly, and stands behind them with firmware releases that fix known problems.

 

 

 

** If you don't have an NTP server running on a local gateway or server, here's a workaround.

• find the IP address of a convenient public NTP server. For example, 132.163.96.6 is the IP of time-e-b.nist.gov, one of the many NTP servers operated by NIST. Enter that into the NTP server field on the Time Settings page.

• on the Network page, add a static route to the C2300. With the example, you'd specify destination=132.0.0.0, subnet=255.0.0.0, Interface = LAN. Set the default gateway to the LAN address of your gateway router, perhaps 192.168.1.1, or whatever is in use on your subnet.

 

With the static route in place,  the C2300 will route queries to the nist time server via the LAN (instead of via the WAN interface).

 

@kyphos, thanks for describing your solution.

 

That`s basically how I am using it right now (I also have a local NTP server running on a Synology NAS, and also on my main router, a Synology RT2600AC).

 

It`s a shame TP-Link has abandoned this device. Even for today`s standards it still has a quite capable hardware. I believe that C2300 v1 even has a better hardware than the C2300 v2 still being sold.

 

I am now looking at some options to gradually upgrade my 3 access points (currently two Archer C7 and the C2300) to 802.11ax/WPA3. For obvious reasons I am not seriously considering TP-Link due to the issues we are discussing here with buggy and abandoned firmware ...

 

BTW, my two Archer C7 (one v2 and anohter v4) were also abandoned by TP-Link. Luckly there is the alternative to run OpenWRT/DD-WRT on the C7s (but the Wifi performance with the open source firmware is half of the stock firmware, not ideal for wired access points, perhaps subject to another topic...).

 

Once again thanks!