Just to note that all devies are on the same firmware (I ensured thet before setup) and the 4th port on the AX72 router (main) goes to a gigabit switch, for the rest of the house hard wired connections

Hi,

To answer some of your questions:

So I have had two different errors

1) Sunday one of the easy mesh devices (all with their own connection to the main Router in star configuration), factory reset itself and turned back into full router mode..

two routers on the network collapsed everything. And it was not until I removed that one (which incidentally was the new one), did the main Router then start even responding, but I could not login at all, rebooting that device caused it to factory reset.

 

Post 1 I completed a full factory resetting each devices (on Sunday), setting into easymesh satellite mode on 3 of them.

Fully configuring the main Router and then slowing bringing things back on (WiFi easy mesh to a device, then move to wired), I got everything up and that worked for a few days.

 

2) Yesterday's one, I turned off a ALG setting, as realised I had not changed them after the factory reset on Sunday.. the device locked up, the easy mesh and wifi carried on, but not from that device.

And eventually I saw a amber light for the internet. When I tried to connect, nothing (i.e. 192.168.87.1), but then I noticed a new WiFi on my phone, it was the factory set WiFi for the router.

 

So last night, for the 2nd time this week, I factory reset every device, but set the 3 "extention" devices up as AP mode. I have then fully setup the main Router, set assigned ips (in DHCP) for the APs, and then connected it all up.

Staggering the channels used and now it is working the same.

 

Some notes:

I never used smart steering (or whatever it's called), as found it didn't play nice with some older devices.

All ax72 devices have an assigned IP address.

 

As this is my home internet I can't really start turning things off etc... but what I would say:

The main Router running in easy mesh mode ran at a CPU of around 80%.

Now it is around 40%

All devices have good airflow.

 

I have since offloaded the DHCP to a different device and not the router

 

Cheers

  @Joseph-TP 

Hi, and don't worry about how long it's taken, all good as moving to AP mode, although introducing a small drop out (like less than a second) when moving between AP points, it it very stable :) 

 

I also like the fact that I can setup iot ssids on each satellite, so have moved some devices to that, which actually means they don't move to a different access point, and this has fixed some of my Google home device disconnections I was having (which I believe was because the device would move from 2.4ghz to 5ghz and then potentially to another point and then would report "not connected" when asking it something, fixing it to 2.4ghz and one ap has fixed that).

 

 

When the above all happened I was not using the DHCP server, that is something I have since setup, as before I was using the ax72 router (main one) as the DHCP, but having to rebuild it a few times meant I decided to migrate.

 

To answer some questions, yes that's the config, a star config I believe it's called. With the switch being the main Route to all wired devices in the house.

 

The DHCP log mentioned was seen on the satellite device as well as the main device (if memory serves).

The way I had DHCP setup was :

Main server - using Mac address of easy mesh satellite, set one to 192.168.87.2

On that satellite, leave it as is and don't change to static IP etc, as I would expect the DHCP to provide out the IP address and then the satellite to only report back once every now and again, not every 30 seconds. 

 

So I have tried, and both caused errors:

 

Having 3 existing easymesh (1 main + 2 satellite) adding the 4th caused it to crash (all on fresh 1.45 firmware).

 

Starting with all 4 in factory reset mode, building the main Router. Then adding, one at a time each mesh device, and when the 4th one was added it caused the devices to lock up and a reboot reset the main device.

On both times I had set dedicated IP addresses... So it might be linked to that? 

 

I'll reply to the email now. Thanks

  @Joseph-TP 

"Main AX72" is the main controller for all devices, so in Easymesh mode it was the ".1" device that was used to control and add the devices.
In AP mode it is the only device not in AP mode. 
In all of the below, at least for the last 3 months, all devices (satellite and clients etc) have been given a reserved address on the DHCP server (regardless of where they were).
This is so that I could assign ranges to different types of devices, i.e. my home server and other always on devices are ".10" to ".19" for example.
So the AX72-1 would have been assigned an address of ".2" and the AX72-2 device an address of ".3" so that all routers / wifi points are in the range ".1" to ".9"
I obviously wait until the network has finished connecting everything and has assigned an address before doing this.
 

Pre adding on 3rd Easymesh satellite - which was stable and, apart from firmware updates, never needed rebooting / restarting etc.
However what I would say that if the main AX72 was rebooted, for what ever reason, I would need to turn off all the satellites and then turn them back on for everything to reconnect properly.. otherwise it would be up to 30 minutes to get back on line as each device reconnection would potentially take out the internet connection - I am unsure if this is expected or not.. but it was certainly odd.

[ISP]

│

└─ (WAN)Main AX72 (DCHP server)  ───┬── [AX72-1]（satellite)

                                                                    ├── [AX72-2]（satellite)

                                                                    └── (LAN4) [Switch] ────┬── [PC/NAS/Other clients]

                                                                                                                 └── [Clients]

Adding on 3rd Easymesh device

To add as well - as the firmware was very out of date, I downloaded 1.26 (as I think it was on 1.23) and installed that, then I connected it to the easy mesh, with it sat right next to me, then upgraded it to 1.45 (though the MainAX72 interface as 1.45 is was not available to download directly). 
Then once upgraded and reconnected, it was only then did I connect it back up via wire. and it was at that point the issue occured.

[ISP]

│

└─ (WAN)Main AX72 (DCHP server)  ───┬── [AX72-1]（satellite)

                                                                    ├── [AX72-2]（satellite)

                                                                    ├── [AX72-3]（satellite) (new)

                                                                    └── (LAN4) [Switch] ────┬── [PC/NAS/Other clients]

                                                                                                                 └── [Clients]

Now:

[ISP]

│

└─── (WAN)Main AX72 (main Router only)   ───┬── [AX72-1]（AP Mode）

                                                                                ├── [AX72-2]（AP Mode）

                                                                                ├── [AX72-3]（AP Mode）(new)

                                                                                └── (LAN4) [Switch] ────┬── [PC/NAS/Other clients]

                                                                                                                             └── [Technitium DNS server assigns IPs for all routers & devices]

The only change on the Now is that since setting that up I have also, as raised a concern separately (https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/845316) that there was alot of DHCP noise, is set all AX72 devices (apart from the main one which was always a static IP) to static IPS, but with reserved / excluded addresses on the DHCP so that they don't get accidently used by something else on the network.

Since moving to the Now setup I have found multiple things:
1) The Main AX72 device now runs at lower CPU and Memory, where as before it was around 80% CPU and around the same for Memory, now it is around 40% to 60% CPU and a flat 55% memory usage. 
2) I am able to setup SSIDs at each of the AP points to have a IOT network that has a -LR or -G etc at the end, so that I can connect devices directly to the AP / router that I wish them to connect to, rather than having them self steer onto the "best" they can find (I found certain google hubs would regularly go offline and so need a reboot to work again)

3) The devices appear stable - 11 days up time and I have not had to do anything with them, I have even made minor tweaks - changing wifi settings etc to different channels on different APs / Main router, and it has handled it all gracefully.

With all of the above being said, Easymesh is nice for the convenience, and having the graceful handover when on mobile devices is great, but my current setup, with it being stable + actually adding a little more (IOT / Guest Wifi's on each device potentially) and the ability to have different wifi strengths on each one (not that I am changing that - as all on Medium). I am happy with the setup for my usecase.

Plus to be able to recreate any of the above topologys would mean me breaking my entire network, which I don't think my family would like