We are a service provider that provides managed wifi routers to customers and are in the process of trying to figure out the issues we have where Archer C20 routers are installed by the CPI security company. CPI installed the router hardwired to our router and will not change how they do this. The Archer is in AP mode. The Archer gets a DHCP address from our router and serves the security devices CPI installs. If we reboot our router, the Archer changes back to its default IP address and starts advertising another DHCP server on its new subnet. When our router comes back online, the Archer does not change back, creating a conflict of 2 DHCP servers on the same network. This is creating major issues for our customers since they experience what appears to be an internet outage. We see all this happen in the Archer logs as we bought an Archer to see if we can reproduce the issue.

The only fix at this time is to power off the Archer, power off and on our router, and wait for our service to start working again.Then we power up the Archer, it sees the local DHCP server and starts working again. This is about the craziest design I have ever seen in a router.

We have no control over the Archer since CPI installs them on all their security installs. CPI will not work with us on this. Does anyone have an idea on how to fix this?