AX20 not detecting RE505X as a mesh device
I've just bought an AX20 router and RE505X repeater. I used WPS to bind them together and I know that the binding is fundamentally OK because my NAS is plugged into the RE505X's RJ45 port and the NAS can see the rest of the LAN etc. The trouble is that the two devices are apparently not one-meshed together. The RE505X has OneMesh enabled and as a result has the WIFI options are disabled. The router has OneMesh enabled but the OneMesh page of the settings reports 'No OneMesh device to work with this mesh router' (sic) even though the two devices are obviously connected together. The signal strength around the RE505X suggests that it's not broadcasting any WIFI.
Does any know why the AX20 would report not finding the RE505X as a OneMesh device?
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Ah ha. I've found the problem. I have a 'Firewalla' Blue plugged into the AX20 that uses ARP spoofing to declare itself as being the network gateway. The trouble (I think) is that it's adding the RE505X to the subnet of the Firewalla's overlay network and the AX20's Mesh service won't be searching for it there. After experimenting it appears that if the AX20 is allowed to fully boot up before Firewalla is powered up then the AX20 will mesh with the RE505X, but at some point the Firewalla steals it away so that AX20 returns to saying 'no mesh device found'. Another lesson learned! Thanks for you help though :D
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You can refer to the RE user guide to join the RE505X in an existing OneMesh network - Chapter 2.
You can refer to Chapter 3 for OneMesh as well.
If you have plugged the NAS via the RE ethernet port I believe you're using the extender as a wireless adapter and that's the reason not seeing it in router's OneMesh devices.
To confirm this, detach the NAS from the RE, and reconfigure it from scratch using the Chapter 2 instructions.
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Hi @terziyski
Thanks for responding. I've been through all those set up steps already and had no luck. I've just factory reset the RE505X and still no luck. Unplugging the NAS has no effect either. Any other ideas? Maybe it's a case of the tp-link marketing machine being a year ahead of the firmware team?
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Both devices are on the OneMesh compatibility list, so they should work together for sure.
Make sure you are with the latest FW (which enables the OneMesh feature).
That applies to the AX20 FW as well. Just make sure the region and the HW version match when downloading the FWs - the links I sent are for EU region.
The other thing that you could do is to bring two devices closer to each other when configuring the RE, maybe the distance between them is too long.
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Ah ha. I've found the problem. I have a 'Firewalla' Blue plugged into the AX20 that uses ARP spoofing to declare itself as being the network gateway. The trouble (I think) is that it's adding the RE505X to the subnet of the Firewalla's overlay network and the AX20's Mesh service won't be searching for it there. After experimenting it appears that if the AX20 is allowed to fully boot up before Firewalla is powered up then the AX20 will mesh with the RE505X, but at some point the Firewalla steals it away so that AX20 returns to saying 'no mesh device found'. Another lesson learned! Thanks for you help though :D
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That's a great finding.
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Yep, I can confirm that. I checked with the Firewalla support and evidently the Firewalla's option to disable monitoring of a device will return it (the RE505X in this case) to router's network/subnet, which I did and it was almost immediately picked up as a mesh node by the AX20. So all's now good!
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That's good to know. Thank you very much for sharing, this will help others also if they experience the same issue.
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