Hi,

I am writing to formally request a feature to disable the DHCP server while keeping the Deco in Router Mode.

I am currently running 3 Deco XE75 units in a mesh system. I need to use an external DHCP server (running AdGuard Home on a Raspberry Pi) to manage static IPs for my Home Assistant integration, as the Deco's address reservation has been unreliable for me in the past (losing configs after resets).

However, because the current firmware forces the Deco to act as the DHCP server in Router Mode, I cannot cleanly migrate my network management.

I have attempted the following workarounds, which all failed due to firmware limitations:

1. The "Strangle" Method: I attempted to shrink the DHCP pool to a single IP address. The firmware threw an error enforcing a minimum pool size of 20 addresses, preventing this.

2. The "Dummy Reservation" Method: I manually created 20 fake Address Reservations to fill the minimum pool so the Deco would have 0 IPs left to assign.

   • Result: Instead of failing over to my external DHCP server, the Deco appeared to block DHCP Broadcast traffic for wired clients entirely once the pool was full. My devices could not discover my external DHCP server, resulting in a total loss of connectivity.

3. IGMP Snooping: I suspected multicast blocking was the issue, but the IGMP Snooping toggle is hidden/missing in the IPTV/VLAN settings on my firmware version, leaving me no way to troubleshoot further.

The Ask: Please provide a simple toggle to Disable DHCP Server in the LAN settings.

We should not be forced to switch to Access Point (AP) mode—and lose all the parental controls, antivirus, and mesh features we paid for—just to gain basic control over our local network IP assignment. This is a standard feature on almost all other consumer routers.

Thank you.