wifi hell but only without Airport Extreme

[Rus Shackleford]

Our house is 99% Macs/iOS devices (1 ps4 and roku as well) so i thought i'd ask you kind folks on this forum if any of this makes any sense as i'm no networking expert but have tried everything i can from searching the internet.

I had a Netgear router for the past year to replace my beloved but aging Airport Extreme (non-AC version!) and it worked fine for a year and then died. Costco had a deal on a TP-Link Archer C4000 so i picked that up thinking well, it's modern - how bad can it be?

In the time i was waiting for that to arrive i hooked up my old Airport Extreme and it worked great. I'd honestly keep using it but it doesn't handle the 8 devices in the house all that well and it doesn't have great range.

Anyway, after some fiddling i was able to get the TP-Link setup or so i thought. The wireless network worked fine for my iPhone and iPad but when connected wired to my iMac there was no internet - it obviously had "internet" since it could create a wifi network. And then i tried to connect to the wireless network with my MacBook Air and no luck. I've tried all the normal reboot modem, then router - etc, etc. with no luck. I can't for the life of me figure out why some of it works and some of it doesn't.

Lastly, in troubleshooting this i unplugged everything and then hooked my Modem directly to the iMac - still no internet.

Plugging the Airport Extreme back made everything work again. Want to just return this TP-Link mess but not sure if anyone can shed some light on why the Airport Extreme seems fine but nothing else does? Could it be "holding on" to the network or something and causing all of these issues? Is it a TP-Link thing?

thanks for listening and any help would be appreciated.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Could be several things. First thoughts:

Yes it is possible to have a WiFi network and no internet. The network created between devices in an area is called a LAN (local area network), while everything outside the area is called WAN (wide area network).

Yes, you can create a LAN of devices, both wired and wireless that can talk to each other and the router, without having a WAN connection. Typically, the WAN connection is through a modem that connects to and delivers access to the internet.

So...just because the new router created a LAN, does not mean that it was successfully connected to the WAN.

If the new router (TP-Link) did not connect properly to the modem, it may be possible that there is some configuration needed to connected to the internet. This can vary by ISP type and brand. You could look and see what the WAN connection info is for the Airport; it must be correct as you get an internet connection. It's hard to say without knowing what type of service and modem you have what needs to be changed or set to get the WAN up and working on the new router.

Some modems have a web interface or other means to view their configuration. This might offer some clues too.

I don't know the TP-link routers, but they are well-liked, generally. If you do decide to return it, check out Amplifi. Some of the most Apple-like, easy-to-set up, it-just-works routers out there these days.

 

[Rus Shackleford]

hobo - thanks a lot for your reply. I finally figured this out and wanted to post this in case anyone runs into this situation in the future.

When i setup the Airport Extreme (again, i'm not well-versed in networking so bear with me here) apparently my iMac (Catalina) and MacBook Air (Big Sur) had a DNS assigned in Network Preferences/Advanced of 10.0.1.x and it wasn't grayed out or anything. Again i might be misstating this completely but i believe the router wanted to assign a dns through it's dns server of 192.168.x.x - So i simply removed the 10.0.1.x entry by clicking the little minus sign and applied - fixed it. Actually, i connected the modem straight to the iMac via ethernet again and still couldn't get online even though i was assigned an IP and everything. Hope this helps someone and feel free to correct my lingo above.

 

[hobowankenobi]

Glad you got it sorted! Yep, default router settings typically push out DNS (the grayed out numbers), but that can be overridden manually (as you found) on any client.

Good DNS numbers to consider instead of the usual ISP stuff:

CloudFlare: 1.1.1.1
OpenDNS: 208.67.222.222

 

[Rus Shackleford]

Glad you got it sorted! Yep, default router settings typically push out DNS (the grayed out numbers), but that can be overridden manually (as you found) on any client.

Good DNS numbers to consider instead of the usual ISP stuff:

CloudFlare: 1.1.1.1
OpenDNS: 208.67.222.222

thanks! i just don't know why the Airport was setting those and not allowing the Macs to obtain a new one from the TP Link router - Maybe an Apple Router to Mac thing....

 

[satcomer]

Now using third party routers Macs should bookmark the Apple support document TCP and UDP ports used by Apple Software Products just in case!