I have a Netgear RAX70 that didn’t quite cover my whole house. I bought a couple of Netgear EAX20 Extenders to increase the range. I have a Synology DS1019+ that I’ve been using to host my Plex Server. Everything was absolutely fine until I installed those extenders. I checked firewall and port forwarding settings to make sure nothing had changed and all looked good. When I connect to the wifi from that router with the extenders, plex says it’s unable to connect. However, if I use my phone and go off of data or connect to a different WIFI, it works just fine. Any ideas?
Server Version#: 1.26.0.5715-7000
Player Version#:
From what you describe, it sounds like those new WiFi devices have created a new subnet and/or are in isolation mode.
Not at all familiar with the brand but can you turn off all the extenders (not remove from the config) and again connect over wifi ?
If so, then you know the extenders are not on the same subnet as the main WiFi.
If you can’t connect with just the main wifi to Plex, check its configuration. It must be on the same subnet and NOT have WiFi isolation mode enabled.
There is little we can do here with this. You might find better suggestions on the Netgear forum – OR— in their support docs (I’ve had good luck there)
To amend ChuckPa’s point… if you segmented your network on purpose and want to keep it that way, you could tell Plex that the different subnets belong to the same local network (Settings > [Server Name] > Network > LAN networks). However from what you describe you might indeed prefer to clean up the network setup.
As @tom80H alludes, it sounds very much like your extenders have been configured (or configured themselves) as a separate network to your existing one on which your Plex server is located. If you have deliberately segmented your network you’ll want to implement routing between segments on your LAN rather than tromboning through your router and treating your Plex Server as if it’s remote.
Can you connect to any other network resources on your LAN from a device connected via one of your extenders? As chuck suggests, if things start working again with the extenders turned off it certainly points to a configuration issue with the network rather than Plex.
Urgh, reading the User Manual for the extenders I fear you’ll have trouble with these. They’re not really mesh, they’re bridges. The extender connects to your existing wifi network as a client, and has an additional radio that broadcasts another SSID (with the same name and password as your main one) to clients that are out of range of the main access point. It will be running a separate IP network to clients on your main AP and LAN, including your Plex server by necessity.
You’ll have nothing but trouble with this equipment, imho
Thank you all for the responses. @gary_parker big thank you for going the extra mile and even looking at the user manual. I started looking into it as well and while they provide a solid boost in coverage without a heavy hit in speed reduction, this unforeseen ramification isn’t great. Most of our TVs are wired through ethernet, so it’s fine. It’s just when the kids want to watch their separate shows on their ipads that this isn’t ideal.
Yeah, the speed hit is that every packet you send/receive on a connected client has to be stored and retransmitted by the extender, adding lag and lowering speed. One thing you can try is to move the extender(s) closer to your main access point. The stronger connection they have to the main ap, the better overall experience will be. The trick isn’t to put the extender(s) where you have poor wifi coverage, but to put them halfway between where the AP and where the area with poor coverage.
Having said that, which was me trying to be helpful, the slightly less helpful recommendation is to ditch that kit and buy some proper mesh networking gear like TPLink Deco or Netgear Orbi. I use three TPLink Deco units and they’re absolutely fantastic. But we’re getting well off-topic now…
@gary_parker first thing i considered after reading your post. I figured it was a nice quick solution given that i picked up a solid non-mesh router not too long ago before moving into a much larger place (1600 sq ft on one floor to 5000 sq ft through three). I am 10 days outside of the return for the extender as well. fail. Do you get good speeds out of your Deco setup? We have 1gig internet and without the extender, i was clocking 650-730mbps while speedtesting on WIFI. I tried the Orbi at one point and could barely get 130-150mbps on the speedtest on wifi.
I’ve only got 220Mb/s broadband, so anything above that is a bonus for my wifi, really. Having said that, I’m using the Deco M5 units which are AC1300, and I’m getting a PHY rate of ~700mb/s at the moment in most places, but that varies as I move around the house.
I have three Deco units, with the main one connected to the router with an ethernet cable and the two ancillary units using wireless backhaul. This means slightly slower throughput, and would be improved with a cabled backhaul, but I can’t run cabling through my house.
I can’t speak for how they’d perform in your house though, obviously. It depends on many factors:
wifi NIC and drivers in your client devices
building materials used in your house
positioning of the units
how busy the 2.4GHz and 5GHz spectrum is in your neighbourhood
One reason I went for the Deco units is that they’re the only consumer devices I could find that allow you to disable the router functionality but maintain wifi mesh operation. All other devices I looked at lost the mesh functionality if you disabled the router (each device becoming a standalone access point), and this was important to my as I wanted to keep using my Openwrt router as it offers much more functionality.
What I would suggest, though, is don’t focus on being able to pull 1Gb/s from one client anywhere in your house. That 1Gb/s broadband is a shared resource for all your devices, wired and wireless, so if the throughout you’re getting is good enough for your use case(s) don’t sweat ringing every last bit/s out of it.
And if you’ve got clients/applications that really need speeds approaching 1Gb/s they should maybe be wired? I mean, what would you be using that amount of bandwidth for on any one client? I’m guessing big game downloads/updates on a console, or movie downloads. Even streaming 4k bluray Remuxes isn’t going to get much over 100mb/s
