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Hello, I recently had a small power outage which seemed to have also knock some of my devices completely off my DD-WRT router and can't add them to the router again. I'm currently bridging my ISP router to a 2nd DD-WRT router and have been using it for a few years now with no issues.

After the power outage several of my devices can no longer detect my router no matter how many times I re-enter my network information and even after restarting both the routers and my devices. I do have some devices that do work fine such as Laptops, PC's,Phone but other devices such as game consoles, tv's, firestick, etc. all stop being able to detect my DD-WRT router.

I called my ISP's and they said everything it working on their end and I even tried connecting to my old ISP's router and things were working fine so the issue might be with my DD-WRT router.

[lexridge]

It sounds like maybe one of your radios did not come back up. For the devices that do connect, are they connecting to 2.4ghz or 5ghz? Also, could be the opposite for the ones that do not connect. Do you have a recent backup you could try restoring in case of NVRAM corruption? Just my two cents anyway.

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[lexridge]

Looks like only 5ghz. Have you looked at your Wireless 2.4ghz settings? Is it enabled? Check the password. Is it what you think it should be? Do you have a backup you can restore? What type of router is it? What version of DD-WRT? All important things to post.

Take a backup as it is, and reset it and rebuild from scratch. You will know pretty quickly if the 2.4ghz comes back with a quick check from a modern mobile device.

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[egc]

We do not support that old builds so better upgrade first and then do a reset after you have upgraded.
Besides there have been serious security vulnerabilities discovered so better not use those old builds from a security perspective

Coming from such an old build a reset to defaults after upgrading is highly recommended/necessary

Make screenshots of your settings as you must not restore from an old build so you have to rebuild from scratch!

Moved this thread to the appropriate forum.

Please follow the forum guidelines with helpful pointers about how to research your router, where and what firmware to download, where and how to post and many other helpful tips:
https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=324087

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Sorry, didn't know where to post this . As for me updating my old build, I'll try that later after I narrow down my options and discover what's wrong. I'm really not in the position to be testing new builds at the moment since I live with people who work from home and have been getting chewed out ever since.

But anyways back with some results. I did a factory reset but also decided to see if restoring my backup to see if anything changed but still having the same issue(kind of was already expecting that). I'll do another factory reset and rebuild everything from scratch later today/night.

Another thing I failed to noticed since my previous posts. Under my Wireless setting, my 2.4 GHz band was on a specific channel of 6 while my 5 GHz was set to auto. Normally I would leave both on auto but I can't remember why I would set that one to a specific channel, unless I wasn't paying attention.

So now I'm wondering if all my devices that can't find or connect to my dd-wrt router were knocked to a different channel. Can routers still pick up a device even if its on a different channel?

I remember something sort of similar happening shortly before I started using dd-wrt and was still using my ISP's router as my main router. Something happened and my old IPS's router wifi channel or range was off pretty far from what I was told and couldn't connect to the internet for all my devices. I had to call my ISPs to come fix it and I remember the guy being pretty shocked at how far the range was off. I didn't know the exact details since I was still pretty new to networking(and still am) or if he was talking about the actual channel setting on the router or something else so I could be getting the terms wrong.

I'd like to hear someone else's opinions on all of this for learning purposes before I go ahead with another factory reset.

[lexridge]

I think the first order of business is to verify if your 2.4ghz radio is completely borked or not. After doing a factory reset, use a WiFi scanner app on a mobile device to check both radios. Scan for both 2.4ghz and 5ghz. If you are still not seeing the 2.4ghz at this point, I would say that radio got fried in the power outage and you're going to need a new router or AP if you want to continue using 2.4ghz.

If you DO see the 2.4ghz, and you are still going to set up from scratch anyway, do yourself a favor and flash the latest ddwrt version for your router. You room mates will thank you for not getting hacked in the end.

[kernel-panic69]

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Hey all, I'm back. Got a lot of information this time so I'll start with everything I did.

1) Before I did a factory reset, I went out and found some wifi/network checking apps on my phone that could show my radio signals(WiFiman Wizard and Wifi Analyzer if anyone wants to know) and sure enough, there was no 2.4ghz coming from my dd-wrt router but 5ghz was showing just fine, in both apps. Then I realized I could have just checked dd-wrt's bandwidth page and see that there was nothing coming from the Wireless(wl0) graph



I tried playing around with the channels to see if something would happen like trying a clean clear channel like channel 1 but still nothing showing up in my network scanner apps however I did manage to see the bandwidth page trying to push out a signal going out but nothing going in like the rest of the graphs


I tried a couple of more clear channels and would see the same thing so I don't know, maybe it pushes out a signal after a certain period before stopping completely. Either way no results on my 2.4ghz showing up on my apps so I went a head and did a factory reset.


2) After I did a factory reset. I checked my apps to see if I could see my 2.4ghz but still nothing. Still only showing my 5ghz.


3) Finally I just went ahead and updated to DD-WRT v3.0-r55460 std (03/25/24) and redid everything from scratch and still nothing.

So I'm guessing I could chalk this one up as my 2.4ghz band isn't working(poor gal couldn't take the abuse). Gonna hate having to go back to my ISP's router for awhile. Right now I'm still using the dd-wrt router since the 5ghz is working fine for some of my devices and the v3.0-r55460 build seems to be doing ok, no new issues so far.

[lexridge]

Well that's a bummer, but I kinda expected these results. You could try to find a used 2.4ghz AP and just connect it to your router. Probably pick one up pretty cheap....or find a cheap replacement router that supports DDWRT. The thought of using an ISP router kinda makes me cringe. lol

[lexridge]

Well, just noticed that DD-WRT now supports (officially as of today) the Linksys EA8300. These can be had on Ebay for as little as $20.

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[lexridge]

Nothing so elegant. Simply put, you would plug it into an Ethernet port on the main router and just let it forward all the 2.4ghz connections into the router for Internet access. You main router would also still handle all the DHCP assignments.

Assuming you find an old AP that is. Or, you could just find a used newly supported EA8300 and throw out the old router completely.....and being April Fools Day is a mere coincidence lol. BS has been working on this router model for a few years now apparently.