I am struggling to understand how my devolo wifi Repeater is working with my brand new TP-Link Archer AXE75 Router.

It could well be the the problem is a fault in the dhcp server on the TP-Link Router, or maybe on my understanding of how WiFi repeaters work with ip addresses. The specific repeater is a devolo WiFi 5 Repeater 1200, which connects thru a devolo magic 2 extender 1200 to a fully installed tp-link Archer AXE75 Router. 

ip v4 addresses come only from the tp-link router DHCP server.  The devolo wifi Repeater is set up and working, I have several devices connected and working thru the devolo repeater back to the top-link router both at 2.4 and 5 GHz.

The problem.  The devolo repeater seems to ’on occasions’ have two mac addresses, last digit changing from 1D to 1C.  So I configure the dhcp server on the tp-link router to reserve ip addresses ….50 and ..51 for the two MAC addresses of the repeater, but the repeater won’t use the .51 ip address, it seems to grab the address of one of the devices (a smart switch device) that’s connected to it, ip …155 in this instance.  This smart switch device also has its ip reserved for ..155 on the TP-link routers dhcp server.

The smart switch device is working ok, and the devolo repeater is working ok, very strange.

Next I changed the reserved ip for the smart switch device from …155 to 136.  Guess what, 2 hours later (the lease time) the devolo wifi repeater has also changed to the new smart switch device ip address. I am assuming the dhcp server is responsible for ip addresses so that the tp-link router is at least partly responsible for this. The smart switch device has a completely different MAC address by the way.

The general questions on WiFi Repeaters.

1) I am guessing this functionality is not correct?

2) Do WiFi repeaters (in general) have 2 ip addresses, I am guessing they probably do, one related to receiving the wifi single, and one for transmitting? Or maybe one for 2.4Ghz and one for 5Ghz?

3) Do WiFi Repeaters have some way of transparently managing their own use of ip addresses. Could the piggy-backing on the ip of an attached device be ‘how WiFi repeaters do their magic?' and not to do with the TP-link routers dhcp server?

4) When I do a device search using several different network  tools (Tether, the routers own web interface, Tplinks WiFi toolkit, devolo app, even third party toolkits, I get different results, sometimes neither Repeater ip addresses are seen, sometimes the ip for mac …1D and sometimes the ip for mac ..1C.  What’s this about.

I know this is complicated since there are both TP-Link and devolo products involved, and my lack of specific WiFi Repeater knowledge, but I am hoping you can sort this out for me.

regards

Vince

Vince