First, some specifics on my setup. I use a TP-Link RE200 in "Repeater" mode to extend the signal (2.4Ghz and 5Ghz) of my home Wi-Fi network, which I find to be quite slow. Connecting to the Wi-Fi extender offers faster speeds than my router on almost all of my devices pretty much everywhere in my house, so, on that front, it's been a massive success.

Where it doesn't work is on desktop linux. I've tested this several times over the year I've owned the extender, on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian and Fedora. All of them can connect fine directly to my main router. But, although all of them detect the extender and allow me to input the password, none allow me to connect. The computer tells me it's connecting for a little while, then it fails, then it tries again, then it fails, and so on...

I've done a little research into what could be causing the problem, and I believe it has something to do with Linux not being able to properly access the DHCP server on my main router through my extender. I believe this is the case because, when trying a bunch of stuff to try and solve the problem, I changed NetworkManager's (that's the software that manages network connections on most Linux distributions) default DHCP client to dhclient, and I was actually able to successfully connect to the Wi-Fi extender network. This seems like it would fix my problem, except that a) download speed is slightly slower on my PC than other devices (kind of annoying), b) the connection drops occasionally (very annoying), and c) alternative DHCP clients for Linux like dhcpcd5 or Kea don't work with the Wi-Fi extender network.

I've made some changes to my setup in an effort to fix the problem, including resetting my Wi-Fi extender and router, assigning static IPs to both my router and extender, creating a DHCP reservation for my PC from my router (using the bizarre "virtual MAC address" the extender insists on assigning my PC), and changing my router's DNS settings back to default (I was using Google's DNS servers before). None seem to have made any difference (aside from the DHCP reservation, which I can confirm is giving me the IP address I want when I connect to the extender with dhclient).

I honestly have no idea what could be the problem or how to fix it. If anybody has experienced this problem in the past or has some ideas please let me know, at this point I'm willing to try anything. Thanks in advance for any help.