(No) Mesh Connection: FRITZ!Mesh Set 1700 with FRITZ!Box 7530

(No) Mesh Connection: FRITZ!Mesh Set 1700 with FRITZ!Box 7530

Does it work for you? OK - nothing to see here.

For me, however, it took quite some time, and manuals, error messages, or FAQs did not help at all.

This came as a surprise, as AVM products had never disappointed me before.

OK, let’s start.

• Repeaters unboxed, first one plugged in

• “Use the app,” they said

• Went through all the steps, but in the end it kept telling me something like “everything is fine, just be patient a little longer,” and then it failed - without any diagnostics at all

• OK, try the WPS connect approach (which should really be simple, right???) - blinking lights, no success

The FAQ says:

Check that you have the latest OS.
Enable 5 GHz.
Make both SSIDs the same.

Not helpful.

Just to make sure, I grabbed an unused FRITZ!Box 7590, configured it as a repeater, and sure enough - that worked. So it wasn't me, nor my Fritz!Box (or so I thought).

Asked ChatGPT. It mentioned problems with the current FRITZ!OS (OK?). It recommended using specific Wi-Fi channels (WTF?).

In the end, the following helped.

Understand what’s really happening during installation:

• The repeater creates a new WLAN (here: “Mesh Set something”)

• The app connects to that WLAN and configures the repeater to connect to the Mesh Master (7530)

• Then it tries to join that WLAN and reconfigures everything to become a Mesh client

OK, start over. Reset the repeater to factory settings.

• Use a real computer and connect to the temporary WLAN

• Open https://192.168.178.1 (ignoring warnings about certificates)

• Abort the setup wizard; go directly to the main menu (the repeater actually runs something very similar to FRITZ!Box OS)

• Go to WLAN → Mesh Repeater, choose Mesh Repeater and WLAN, then select the WLAN to join

Too easy? Yes. Because my WLAN is greyed out.

• Just checking: no, it’s not the channel, and not the SSIDs.

In the end, the answer was that the WLAN to join needs WPA3 on 5 GHz - at least for newer FRITZ! products like the 1700.

AVM - this could have been much easier. For instance, with useful diagnostics. Do better, and then you’ll re-earn my respect.