Hi, am trying to deploy a mesh using 2 x AP1000C. Mesh root is fine. I added a mesh node just by plugging in power and searching from the root. The root is a fixed IP. The node while it appears to operate fine, has no IP and is therefore unmanageable. Is there a way to force it to take an IP so I can manage it and update the firmware? Of do I need to take it out, reset and add the IP before joining it to the mesh?
All help appreciated. Thanks

I forgot to say that I have tried the wireless app. All these can see the node but there is no method to manage it.

Interesting - according to page 76 of the user guide https://www.draytek.co.uk/support/downloads/vigorap-1000c/send/828-vigorap-1000c/1959-ug-vap1000c-v11 the Mesh Status page shows the IP addresses of the nodes (it does this on my 2926ac mesh root but I wondered if having a separate backhaul radio on the AP1000 made any difference).

Something not right somewhere - what does your "Mesh Status" page show?

david@pogus.co.uk wrote:
The root is a fixed IP. The node while it appears to operate fine, has no IP and is therefore unmanageable. Is there a way to force it to take an IP so I can manage it and update the firmware?

Is there a DHCP server somewhere in your network? (from where the Mesh Node can obtain an IP address)

Or do I need to take it out, reset and add the IP before joining it to the mesh?

Quite possibly :wink:

During my experiments with my AP903/AP802 combo, I've had the AP802 in this state quite a few times. (Destroying and recreating the mesh has not proceeded in a repeatable fashion. Sometimes, it just works, but frequently, things have ended up in this half-way state between working and not working )

There are several threads here that all exhibit some or all of the problems I've experienced.

Suffice to say I am very very disappointed at the utter mess Draytek have made of "mesh" and their so called "plug and play" attitude to it. BIG FAIL Draytek!

All seemed to work out of the box initially, but 24 hours in and my house had no wifi at all, on any client regardless of AP they tried to connect to. I had to turn off the Mesh mode on the 2862 that was acting as root and factory reset the 903 and restore its config "pre-mesh" and then factory reset each 802. I then kept the 802s powered off for a while to ensure it had settled down again.

I'm now working through the Mesh set up from scratch one 802 at a time after putting the 903 back in Mesh Node mode with a wired uplink. Note that the 903 is in wired uplink mode and my backhaul network on the Dashboard is working fine - it shows the hop\uplink tree etc. Whilst configuring an 802 using a wired connection the backhaul gives the mesh not in use message as you describe, but after rebooting several times it sometimes said that error and sometimes displayed the hop tree - clearly not consistent.

The 2862ac Mesh Status is also very inconsistent, the point of complete uselessness.

What really annoys me the lack of consistency with Draytek. So many options are either missing, different, or unavailable between the 3 device types I have. The inability of the WLAN Profiles to transfer all the possible WLAN settings is a problem too (no Advanced Config Sync etc). I've found I have to manually configure each of the Wireless LAN pages myself and match them between the 2862ac and each 903\802 otherwise the SSIDs are not the "same".

As it stands now, there is hit and miss Central AP Management. All devices appear in the External Devices list on the 2862ac. None of them will show up in the Central Management >> AP >> Status screen. Even after factory resetting, not changing the admin password and doing nothing but to attempt to get them into Central Management they still refuse to centrally manage. I'm beginning to accept I think that Draytek just cannot maintain the ecosystem they are selling and cannot get their hardware interfaces and abilities to align correctly.

I've noticed on the 2862ac Mesh >> Support List, it doesn't list the very latest 802 firmware (1.3.5) or the latest 903 firmware (1.3.7.1). The 2862ac firmware is 3.9.4.1_BT. So I downgraded one 802 to 1.3.4 as the Support List indicates to see if that makes any difference, it clearly didn't. Nothing has changed and the same issues\problems exist.

So if someone else reads this and asks if they should try Mesh, my answer is no. Draytek currently at the time of writing have failed to achieve a stable Mesh management system so I wouldn't waste your time.

dmcuk wrote:
I've noticed on the 2862ac Mesh >> Support List, it doesn't list the very latest 802 firmware (1.3.5)

The AP802's 5GHz doesn't work on V1.3.5, if you use VLAN tags. (Only tested in wired AP mode).

Reported to Draytek 25/11/20 #DQ584939 (I sent them a config. file, with which to reproduce the fault...)

Have to agree with a lot of this, unfortunately.

I'm currently running a 2927ac as mesh root, with 3xAP903 in wired uplink mode and 1 x AP903 wirelessly connecting to one of the nodes. (This is a recent change if you've had the patience to follow the other threads :lol: )

As far as wifi connectivity goes it all seems to be working fine, as long as I use WPA2 and not WPA3. Their are some oddities as reported elsewhere - the nodes all report 0 clients in the 2927 Mesh Status page (on the 2926ac this feature worked fine, showing my usual 18-20 clients connected), and the wireless node is permanently on "Amber" - connected but not ready to sync. The latter is "not" a great problem, because like you I've set all the node parameters manually. (It was, however, "Green" when I used the older 2926ac as the mesh root )

As far as I can see "Central AP Management" is not compatible with the AP's in Mesh mode. None of the AP's appear in the AP Status pages, simply a message that "the status is on the Mesh Status page". I don't think that this is documented anywhere :?:

One of the puzzling and annoying things about Draytek's implementation is the lack of consistency between devices - some devices have a dedicated separate backhaul channel - but what are they supposed to connect to? Some devices have the facility to choose either 2.4GHz or 5GHz for the backhaul channel, but others don't. Some (is it just one at present?) have wifi 6 but nothing else does.

It's a joke in very poor taste I'm afraid.