When the student first got in touch I assumed this was a straightforward dead router. It turned out to be a two-storey, seven-bedroom share house on a DSL line where two different mesh kits both failed in different ways, and where the thing that finally made it stable was giving up on a single shared network name.
The awkward part of this job is that two routers which had both tested fine on a WAN-port connection misbehaved on this DSL service. A router that works on one connection type is not automatically fine on another, and in a seven-room share house the symptom reaches everybody at once.
| Attempt 1 | Attempt 2 | Attempt 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main router | Replacement router A | NETGEAR mesh main | TP-Link |
| Second unit | Original Telstra Smart WiFi Booster | NETGEAR mesh node | NETGEAR as extender |
| Network names | Meant to be shared | Shared | Deliberately separate |
| What went wrong | The two brands would not mesh at all | WiFi present, internet gone within 30 min | Stable on follow-up, both floors covered |
Root cause: the original Telstra router had stopped passing signal, and the follow-on faults came from hardware combinations that did not suit this DSL service — a replacement router that could not mesh with the Telstra booster, then a NETGEAR mesh pair that produced WiFi with no internet within half an hour while the main unit's internet light stayed normal. The setup that held was a TP-Link main router with the NETGEAR unit as an extender on deliberately separate network names. On follow-up half a day later the household reported no further dropouts, with coverage upstairs and down.
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