Archer vr1600v as access point

[Shane]

Hi @D1ngo,

If you wish to use our supplied TP-Link as the main modem/router you simply need to change the connection mode to "DHCP mode" and connect the 2nd router to one of the LAN port. Make sure you disable the Wi-Fi of the TP-Link and use the router extension's Wireless Network.
 

You can visit this link for reference. Connect Asus RT-AC88U to Huawei HG659.

Regards,

Hi, I'm trying something similar to extend wifi to my garage downstairs, and want to use my TPLink TDw8960 as the secondary extender, and remain using the archer 1600v as the nbn modem router.  After much research and angst, I dug up that TPG had blacked out the WDS from the 1600, so I believe my only other option is to wire from the modem to the 8960, and I would expect that I should connect to 5g in range of that signal, and whatver 8960 wifi connection i get, but cant seem to work it out.  Is there something else thats disabled I dont know about?

Alternatively, I have a neytrgear n300 gateway that I can use if its more compatible.

TIA

[D1ngo]

Many thanks Shane, 

But then I will still only have the effective range of one wi-fi.  In essence, I want to use the supplied archer, and the other TP to extend the range

[Shane]

Hi @D1ngo,

Unfortunately we do not support that. We recommend to check it on google for advance Wireless network configuration.

Regards,

Many thanks Shane, 

But then I will still only have the effective range of one wi-fi.  In essence, I want to use the supplied archer, and the other TP to extend the range

[D1ngo]

All good thanks, 

That was plan A through K, but hit the WAN hurdle everytime, can you advise how I can enable this on the Archer? 

[Sijnja]

Thanks @edesousa for sharing the bug and workaround you found. I was banging my head against a wall wondering why it would stop working when trying to set it up until I saw your post and followed your recommendation and it worked. Very frustrating the firmware has this issue. Wasted 3 hours for something that should have taken 5 mins. At least it’s working now

[Sijnja]

By the way these TPG supplied routers aren’t possible to update their firmware by ourselves, is that right? Hopefully TP Link have fixed this critical issue, but even so I’m guessing it’s not possible to get an update

[D1ngo]

They have to get the firmware pushed through you can't use an install file. I had archived my attempt to link the access point up months ago as it drove me insane I might need to have another look at those instructions and see if they make any sense to me this time. I think that because it was a combination of many single instructions in updates it got out of hand it would have been nice for TPG to have set a instruction guide with no responsibility attached on their behalf

[rajivsrivastava]

Hi there,

I have been trying to do what you mentioned here.

Could you please share your settings so that I can also configure Archer VR1600v as Access point.

Your help will be highly appreciated.

I have wasted too much time so far.

[icanfly]

I too am having issues setting Vr160 v2 as a wireless access point

Thing is, I got it working so wifi clients can get an IP and access internet but then after a while, it will fail and say no internet and no ip to the wireless client

Here is my setup: 

I am going LAN port to LAN port to the vr1600v. I deleted all the DSL connected and ewan set to dynamic, disable VLAN, I went into advanced settings and disbaled NAT and set the MTU to match my main modem (1480)

Still I dont think it matters becase this router doesnt think its connected to the internet anway

in LAN settings, I set static IP to one in my same subnet as my main router, now I have tried both setting DHCP tio disabled and setting it to enabled but then setting it as DHCP relay and putting my main router as the remote server

I have tried disabling IGMP snooping

In security, I disabled all the firewalls and Dos Protection (I read another thread someone trying to have the same setup and reckons wifi would work for a while like me then stop and his fix was to disable DoS as he reckons his device was showing in the logs as being blocked)

So anyway whether I set DHCP to off or on with Relay option, no worries for other LAN clients being able to connect, and as I said briefly I am able to get wifi clients connected and I have even verified this by setting a different SSID and I can connect to it fine, and then also after I set the same SSID as my modem I confirmed my wifi was connected to the MAC address as this one being used as the access point

but then as I said after a while, it will just give up and wifi will go back to having no internet!

At this point I have given up but I do have to ask you all, are you making sure you set the wifi channels manually and setting them to a different channel than you rmain modem/router? You need to do this otherwise you could end up with two modems broadcasting on the same channel. Each access points needs to have it owns channel

Hope this can get sorted its been doing my head in for weeks. 

Also to note I found when I plugged into the vr1600x on LAN port 1 my speeds were abysmal! As in 5 mbps. Plugged into lan port 4 and got full speed..something else to try

EDIT: Found this post https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2717311

This isnt exactly the same setup as they are connecting the WAN port of the main modem to a LAN port on the Archer, whereas we are going LAN to LAN

Anyway I did what they said and added a DSL connection in Bridge mode and did the interface grouping thing. I was able to get it work still connecting via wifi and being able to get internet so not sure if it made a difference.. But I will again monitor it and see

Some other points.. I set archer to port 8083 for access and while I can access the router locally, I cannot access it externally even if I port forward 8083 to it from my main router. And even when I turn on remote management

Also I discovered something else yesterday in that while my phone could connect to this wifi my PC had the same issue about no ip address. I found my phone was using randomised MAC so I turned this on for my PC and it seemed to fix it so not sure if this is something to consider to get the wifi to work. I am not sure what randomising MAC is doing or why it seems to work though

Another UPDATE: So even though I confirmed I had WIFI working few miniutes later its broken again. I was definitely connected to the WIFI with the different SSID and working and switch back to same SSID and broken...

I am going to try leaving it on a different SSID this time for a lot longer and see if that maintains connection

[martian]

To configure the VR1600v, or any router, into a simple access point, WAN port shouldn't be used. Just LAN-to-LAN connection from the VR1600v to the main router's LAN port shall be adequate. Then, simply refer all the DHCP leasing function to the main router (if the main router is acting ats the DHCP Server).

With this VR1600v supplied by TPG, there is an WAN setting entry that seems to stubbornly stuck in the configuration - that is, the EWAN ewan_ppoe entry shown in my attached capture. I tried delete it and it went away for a while but then it came back. I have tried to remove it quite a few times but failed. Not sure if this is the doing of TP-LINK or TPG (hard-coded and pre-configured).

Further, the configured VR1600v running as an AP only works intermittently.

Not good...