ZenWiFi Mesh

[Toby1Kenobe]

Wrong board, I  know, but in desperation...

I recently upgraded to full fibre (FTTP) and now have the Openreach OTC box on the inside wall of my dining room next to the router. Works fine with my standard Vodafone route (for reference, this is a THG3000). At the same time as upgrading, I bought an Asus ZenWiFi mesh system with three boxes: one to act as a router (i.e. to replace the Vodafone one) and two others to act as nodes in other parts of the house. However, I cannot get it to work. When I plug it in and attach the ethernet cable from the OTC box to the WAN input on the Asus router, the route light flashes green for a few seconds (meaning it is configuring) then it goes solid blue for a second (meaning it's all good to go) but then it goes to a straight red (meaning there is no internet connection). When the Openreach engineer installed the fibre, I set everything up using the Asus app. My phone will find the router with a strong signal, 5GHz, strong security, etc but no actual internet connection. I tried upgrading the firmware. The Asus app told me there was a PPPoE authentication error. I checked the PPPoE username and password in the Asus app and this had been auto-filled as my standard Vodafone account username and password. So I replaced these with PPPoE credentials Vodafone sent me. Still not working and said I should connect the ethernet cable from the modem (in this case, the OTC box) to the (Asus) router. It was already connected and I know the cable is fine because it works fine with the Vodafone router. Unplugged the router, waited a bit, and tried again. Did this twice. Still the same issue. Any ideas? Feels like it's so close to being sorted but there's an issue between the OTC/modem and the Asus router. Any help would be gratefully received! Thanks

[jzchen]

I believe you are on the correct forum.  Which ZenWiFi model please?  Which port specifically did you try?  Is it possible it has WAN set as a different port?

[Toby1Kenobe]

Hi, thanks for the response. It's the Zen WiFi XD4 Plus (is this what you meant by asking what model it is?). The ethernet cable is coming from the LAN output of the OTC OpenReach box and into the WAN/LAN input on the Asus box that is serving as the router. There are only two options: WAN/LAN and LAN. It should be the WAN one, right? I'm going to try switching off the OTC box (the modem) and switching it on again. If this makes no difference, then I will try a Reset on the ASUS box. And if this still doesn't work, I will switch out that box for one of the others (i.e. one of the ones that I was planning to use as a node). If none of these work, I'll have to return the kit because I can't see what else I can try.

[jzchen]

Yes XD4 Plus is exactly what I was looking for.  Is this British Telecom service?  (It might be helpful if I search for incompatibility/difficulty using one’s personal router).  Sometimes here in the United States the ISP has rental routers for you, and (I suspect) give a hard time when you try to use your own.  (They want some extra money by loaning your theirs).  They may say for example they can’t help you if you don’t use their router, (which is fair if they have designed the router to work well with their service).

Two things to look at:

Do you need to release the DHCP lease before connecting the ASUS router to the ONT?  2nd there is a function to clone the Vodafone router MAC address.  Maybe the service is rejecting the XD4 Plus because it expects the Vodafone router that they supplied you.  (This is usually accomplished by connecting the Vodafone router to the LAN port on the ASUS router and finding the “Clone MAC Address function”.  Or maybe you simply copy it over to the appropriate box/field.

EDIT-  There is a possibility that the one you tried may be defective.  (I hope not as you wouldn’t be the first I’ve seen in the past week or two, meaning high defect rate in ASUS ZenWiFi routers)…

[Toby1Kenobe]

Hi, thanks again for these ideas. In the end, I used the reset button on the bottom of the router box, then fiddled around trying various things with the setup on the app and after about 50 minutes it worked. No idea what actually made the difference. It then turned out that the power socket on one of the nodes was faulty so I've had to switch that out for a new one. All set up now. However, what's is bothering me is the download speeds. I just connected my (new Dell Latitude) laptop to the router using an ethernet cable and got a download speed of 515Mbps (happy with this, not least because I am paying for an "up to 500Mbps" tariff with my ISP). The same speed test on the same laptop in the room above the router, which has a node just outside it, using WiFi, is just 120Mbps. There are no other devices being used in the house at the moment. And downstairs, standing right next to the router, I got a download speed of just 40Mbps on my phone. What can I do to sort this out? I bought the Mesh system principally because, before we had full fibre, the WiFi connection in the room above the room where the router was sometimes unreliable. But with my standard (cheap) ISP-provided router, I was consistently getting download speeds of 450-500Mbps in this room, using WiFi. The Mesh system was supposed to provide a consistent, reliable connection in all parts of the house, not to decimate my download speeds!