Why no one post here? any way, the Deco has AP mode now, so it works :o

I don't know about the topic starter, but the AP mode did not work well for me. I have had pretty similar situation, just without VPN.

My connection was ADSL modem --> Netgear WiFi router --> my wired and wireless devices. I just wanted to improve WiFi coverage in my house and in the garden. And I did not want to mess up with my existing network setup.
So I tried to connect Deco in AP mode first to my Netgear router. It worked. But it stopped working multiple times per day. And another weird thing I noticed was that 2 of 3 Deco devices were asking IP addresses from the Netgear router by DHCP like every 30 seconds. Neither multiple resets of individual units, nor the whole Deco network re-creation from scratch helped to resolve the issue.

Thus I wanted to send back Deco to Amazon. But then I decided to try it in the router mode. And it worked. Well, it worked after some "dancing" around with the routers' setup.
So I have now 2 sub-nets at home. It's working fine. But I had to re-assign all the wired devices within the old sub-net to static IP addresses. Because I had to switch off the DHCP in my Netgear router. And why I had to do it? Because the primary Deco unit, even though I assigned a static IP to it in its advanced options, continued to mess up with DHCP requests to Netgear from time to time. And it lead to breaks in Deco's network functioning.

I don't know about the topic starter, but the AP mode did not work well for me. I have had pretty similar situation, just without VPN.


My connection before was like that: ADSL modem --> Netgear WiFi router --> my wired and wireless devices. I just wanted to improve a WiFi coverage in my house. And I did not want to mess up with my existing network setup.
So I tried to connect Deco in AP mode first to my Netgear router (Deco hardware version 1.0, software was updated to 1.1.5 after the first connection).
It worked. But it stopped working multiple times per day. And another weird thing I noticed was that 2 of 3 Deco devices were asking IP addresses from the Netgear router by DHCP like every 30 seconds.
Neither multiple resets of individual units, nor the whole Deco network re-creation from scratch helped to resolve issues.


Thus I wanted to send back Deco to Amazon. But then I decided to try it in the router mode. And it worked. Well, it worked after some "dancing" around with the routers' setup.
So I have now 2 sub-nets at home. One is the "old" for the devices connected to Netgear router (mostly by wires). And another one is the Deco WiFi sub-net.
It's working fine. But I had to re-assign all the wired devices within the old sub-net to static IP addresses. Because I had to switch off the DHCP in my Netgear router. And why I had to do it? Because the primary Deco unit, even though I assigned a static IP to it in its advanced options, continued to mess up with DHCP requests to Netgear from time to time. And it lead to breaks in Deco's network functioning.

Sorry about double posting above. It's looking like I did my editing not in a right way. :)

Enson Loo wrote

2 of 3 Deco devices were asking IP addresses? if you set static IP address for the main deco, I guess they are the other two slave Deco units, how do the three Deco units connect to each other? internet works fine on all three Deco, right? maybe check firmware update? I cannot think of more solutions...

It's not possible to specify a static IP for Deco in AP mode, so they worked as DHCP clients. It was a main unit and one of the slaves which were asking continuously about IP addresses from the router when they were in AP mode. A main unit was connected to the router with a wire and the other 2 Decos were attached to the main one by WiFi, just as described in the manual.
Internet worked fine on all of them. But not all the time. There were interruptions many times per day (I would even say per hour). Some of the units went in the "red blinking" mode for some time. And then they were back to the normal functioning. But that was a repetitive issue in the AP mode.
The firmware was updated to the latest 1.1.5 right after the first connection.

My Decos are working fine now in the router mode. But only after I switched off DHCP in my Netgear router, as I wrote above. So for me all those issues look like either a problem of DHCP implementation in Deco, or a conflict between DHCP implementations in Netgear router and in Deco.