td-w9970 as access point or give up?

I am about to give up on this but on the chance anyone has a bright idea?

Tp-link td-w9970 modem router. I am trying to turn it into an access point instead.

I have put it in router mode (instead of modem router mode) as directed. Turned off DHCP.

It almost works. But if restarted it stops working. If I move the ethernet cable from its wan network socket to a regular network socket the internet often springs to life. Or vice versa?

Right now its stopped letting me login to the web admin at all. But if I swap the cable back and forth it will let me get internet over the wifi? Without juggling the cable I can connect via wifi but without internet.

A tv box connected by an ethernet cable can always get internet? It via wifi that I have to juggle the cable to wake it up.

I am on the latest firmware. Driving me up the wall.

I may just buy one of these for £15 which actually has an access point mode. https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001FWYGJS Just annoying that this says it should work but I can't seem to get it to work. Grrr.

Follow part 2 of the guide...

https://youtu.be/Cg_gGECGLiY

Thank you for the though pheasant. The effort is appreciated. Sadly I had already seen that video, the guide on their website and a couple of other forum posts, the ones on their website unanswered. They are all rather long winded ways to say put it in router mode with a seperate ip address and turn off DCHP, which I have done.

Its annoying that it nearly works if you reboot it and swap the cables enough. For a few hours at least. Then it stops. The fact it always works if you are physically connected to the box via a cable makes me think the wireless bit of the firmware has gone wrong at some point and maybe can no longer cope with this function despite their claims. Though the tantalising thought there might just be some vital setting...

HI,

My 2 cents worth here...You state that you've switched off DHCP on the router....Do you have another router (or similar) that is handling DHCP or a DHCP Server? Are you using static IP addresses for all your network devices? I have a VM Hub 4.0 and when it's in access point mode, DHCP is automatically switched on. When it's in Modem Mode that's when DHCP is switched off as you would be connecting the Hub to another router that would be handling DHCP.

HTH,

In reply to a post by mking90031:

HI,
Do you have another router (or similar) that is handling DHCP

Thanks, Yup, my main modem router hands out ip address just fine. If you connect to the dodgy access point by a cable you always get a ip address from the master router, if you connect by wifi you sometimes get a ip address and internet for a while, sometimes not.

To be honest I think it may be time to give up, maybe the wifi chip is just a lemon.

Speaking generally....

Check the IP address, gateway and subnet mask of your router and the w9970? Make sure there isn't a clash. Ensure the DHCP server on the w9970 switched off, as is the firewall and NAT function.

Check all when connected together.

If you cable connect your router and w9970, then cable connect to the router with a laptop you should be able to reach the home page of both devices. Ditto if your cable connected from laptop to the w9970 and finally wirelessly connected.

In reply to a post by mnbvcxz:

In reply to a post by mking90031:

HI,
Do you have another router (or similar) that is handling DHCP

Thanks, Yup, my main modem router hands out ip address just fine. If you connect to the dodgy access point by a cable you always get a ip address from the master router, if you connect by wifi you sometimes get a ip address and internet for a while, sometimes not.

To be honest I think it may be time to give up, maybe the wifi chip is just a lemon.

Eh? If its not connected via cable then it sounds like you are trying use it as a WiFi Bridge not a AP. An AP provides access to a network, a bridge allows you to join 2 networks together. Follow the instructions to set it up as a Bridge and try it.

In reply to a post by dogcat:

In reply to a post by mnbvcxz:

In reply to a post by mking90031:

HI,
Do you have another router (or similar) that is handling DHCP

Thanks, Yup, my main modem router hands out ip address just fine. If you connect to the dodgy access point by a cable you always get a ip address from the master router, if you connect by wifi you sometimes get a ip address and internet for a while, sometimes not.

To be honest I think it may be time to give up, maybe the wifi chip is just a lemon.

Eh? If its not connected via cable then it sounds like you are trying use it as a WiFi Bridge not a AP. An AP provides access to a network, a bridge allows you to join 2 networks together. Follow the instructions to set it up as a Bridge and try it.

Would agree with dogcat looks like you are trying to set it up as a WiFi bridge, I had mine V2 setup as an access point in the loft via cable it worked but seemed to take a while to give out an IP address, but it worked ok once setup correctly. The firmware on a V4 the latest version is completely different from the older versions but I've moved to a semi-pro setup now which had a bit of a learning curve.

My setup was a V2 modem router with my old V1 as an access point.

I think you may possibly be misreading the last post by the OP. I don’t get the impression he is trying a wireless bridge connection, rather a direct wireless connection from laptop to the w9970. Perhaps I’m wrong, but that’s how I read it.

It is totally unclear what the OP is trying to do, to use the W9970 as a wifi access point it would need a permanent ethernet connection from a LAN port on the W9970 back to the main router, not from the W9970 WAN port as it not acting as a router. Swapping cables between the ports is just confusing the issue

The statement If you connect to the dodgy access point by a cable you always get a ip address from the master router,

Does that mean connecting a device to the W9970 by ethernet or connecting the W9970 back to the main router by ethernet? Just more confusion.

I did consider that the OP may be trying to create a wireless bridge or extender function or even wireless client mode where the W9970 wifi connects back to the main router to provide connections via the LAN ethernet sockets but it probably isn't either of those.

🤷‍♂️ OP would need to clarify the exact cabling setup. I think the “WAN” port on this unit can be set to operate as LAN port also. This may be adding to the confusion.

put it back in to router mode, configure the Wi-Fi,turn off dhcp and give the router a fixed IP address, you dont need to but it will allow you to access the web interface to change the wifi settings

now plug a cable from the LAN port to an LAN port on your router or switch and you will have a working AP

A full (factory) reset probably wouldn't go astray either. Best to start with a clean sheet with these things. Work up from there.

Thank you for all the attention and thoughts. Sorry not to be more clear.

Short answer is I've given up and got one of the tplink £15 cable routers. It's not perfect but it worked within five minutes of taking it out of the box, actual dedicated access point mode, gave it an ip address and put the wifi as I like it and it all worked fine, just in time for easter.

As to the now slightly redundant questions, yes I was definitely trying for an access point. I always had a cable from the access point to my router. I meant the additional lan ports on the back always provided internet to anything plugged into them. That is what I meant. It does show that internet was at least reaching the device. But why the lan sockets worked but not always the wifi?

Whether I connected the router to the AP's wan socket or a lan socket, it still randomly decided to work or not via wifi. There did not seem to be a predicable right or wrong socket.

The first thing I did before posting here was to reset it to factory settings, give it an ip address and turn off dhcp. But thanks for the idea.

I didn't try fiddling with nat settings, though the firewall was off.

I didn't try having it get an ip address automatically from the router, that had never occurred to me, I always though the were meant to have static ones, perhaps it would have helped.

I could always get internet out of the lan ports. I could always connect to it via wifi but only sometimes would the wifi provide internet.

So who knows, from what you have all said it sounds like there was no missing secret setting, it should have worked my way but it didn't. Perhaps my wifi chip is borked in some internal way. The fact it stopped letting me login to the web admin suggests it is not healthy.

Still worth a try. Thanks for the ideas. I guess I will see if it will reset to me a backup modem or put it in the recycling. Ah well.

Sure. There’s absolutely no point flogging a dead horse - especially when the new horse is fifteen quid. Good to hear you’re running.

You've found an affordable setup that works, which is good. I tried something like this several years ago and also failed. Here's some of what I remember. I haven't passed by these forums much for ages, bit of a coincidence this was mentioned on the main site this morning

Back in the day, I had the same goals, and similar kit (TP-Link W99x0 even, and various others too). Lots of things tried, none succeeded for more than half a day or so, problem went away when I moved house, and in the intervening years I've read about why this may have failed. And then forgotten much of it again.

As it turns out it's not specific to any particular kit but it may depend on specific capabilities in the kit.

Basically things like this get complicated. They may appear to work some of the time, and then fail for no apparent reason. Some of it is to do with caching, other related factors involve the packet header formats on an 802.11 WLAN which are not the same as in the hard-wired world.

There are various caches in software and in hardware that may be involved in this picture, e.g. a switch will have a cache of what MAC addresses are on which of its ports, various devices may have a cache of what MAC addresses need to be used for what IP addresses. Sometimes things drop out of caches e.g. after a reset or sometimes just after a timer expires. This means that the same config may appear to behave differently at different times.

Most things work just fine in an environment where eveything is using actual cables. Add a single WLAN (single AP, multiple client devices) with no intermediate "hops" and that should usually work just fine too.

Add an extra "hop" to the picture and things on the WLAN can start to get complicated because sometimes there can be intermediate boxes that don't know where to forward incoming traffic.

At this point you *might* want to look elsewhere to read about "three address wifi packet format". There's also a "four address" format.

To make things like this work as you and I wanted, your WiFi gear needs to support the WiFi packet formats which allow three (or maybe even four) MAC addresses in the WLAN packets. Without the extra MAC address, there will be times when data arrives at an intermediate box (switch, AP, router, etc) and the box doesn't know where to send it next. Unhappy punter at this point. Or something like that.

The extra MAC addresses in the WLAN packet, which are also seen if the WLAN supports WDS, avoid this situation.

That's what I remember of the fundamentals, and there's probably more to it (such as proper choice of IP addresses, and goodness only knows what happens if you want to play IPv6).

Anyway hopefully you're sorted for now.