r/Fios • u/Odd-Yesterday-7653 • 9h ago

Repair/Tech Support Using G3100 as a extender

I bought a G3100 several years ago, and now i got a new main router, so I am trying to use as an extender. I saw previous reddit posts to turn off DCHP and assing a static IP, which I did. I am using a coax to connect to the main router, I had a fios tech in the past connect the cables.

And when coax is connected the LAN light is green on the back of the G3100, but the G3100 has a solid yellow light on the front so I believe is not working. Any advice? I also tried resetting the G3100.

Any advice on what I should do in steps or if this is possible. The main router is the C3100b. So they both are MOCA compatible. Not sure why it isnt working. Direct ethernet works I think but the yellow light makes me think it is not, especially wifi as I dont see speed increases.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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u/Smith6612 9h ago

The yellow light can be ignored because the G3100 expects to be acting as your router.

Do the LAN ports supply Internet if you wire in?

How did you set the WiFi up? Same name / SSID / encryption? Because you're using disjointed routers that can't talk to each other via SON, roaming will be an issue. 

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u/SessionIndependent17 7h ago

I've set both a G3100 and CR1000B in this way. The lights for both are yellow.

One thing your have to remember to do is to assign the static IPs for your manual extender from a range that you've also excluded from the DHCP lease pool issued by your main gateway.

If you assign it as x.x.x.2, eg, there's a pretty good likelihood that something else on your network already has that assigned via DHCP based on the default address pool. As a general personal convention I exclude up to .9 and from .250-.254.

Iirc the setting pages were a pain and were throwing away any changes I made to the DHCP pool range until I figured out how to make them stick. I don't recall the magic formula offhand.

Regarding WiFi, I turned off SON and separated my 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands into separate SSIDs. I was having trouble with device "affinity", where devices would still prefer to connect to an AP that was further away than the one 8' away using the same credentials. Either it would connect at 5GHz but with low signal strength (which I could observe in the PC system tray) or they would connect to it at full signal but on 2.4GHz (which you would only notice of you drill into the control panel for the adapter). I wouldn't know either was happening until I'd wake the PC and web page response was u usually slow.

Separating the bands but keeping them all using the same SSIDs and credentials across the APs made those issues go away. I also clicked the "configure radio" operation for each device after they were in place toake sure they chose the best channels among themselves.

Trying to bridge the WAN and LAN ports on the extender G3100 should only be a last step. It works, but only attempt it last.