RT-AC66U - Repeater mode - master browser for WORKGROUP

[snagglewest]

First post and I'm by no means a network engineer so be gentle please

I upgraded to a RT-AC68U as my main router a few months back and it's been working flawlessly after getting everything setup.

So now I have a extra router sitting in the closet and I've always had a weak signal at the far end of the house, so I decided to take the old RT-AC66U and set up in repeater mode fill in the weak spot. I pulled the RT-AC66U out of the closet and did a a clean setup. 30-30-30 reset, upgraded to the latest Asus firmware, then installed the latest Merlin and then set it up straight into repeater mode. It seems to be working well and the signal at the far end of the house is much improved, but...

The problem is the RT-AC66U has decided to become the master browser for WORKGROUP which is not the name of my windows "workgroup". This is creating problems on the network which is a mixture of windows, linux and android appliances using a combination of SMB and NFS shares.

So my question is, how do I set the RT-AC66U to relinquish the master browser and play nice on the network? The RT-AC68U never tried to hijack the master browser, so what gives? Google failed me on a solution so here I am.

Snag

 

[ColinTaylor]

Can you not just log into the RT-AC66U and turn off the Master Browser option? If the Samba page isn't available in repeater mode you'll have to temporarily switch it back to router mode.

BTW 30-30-30 is a DD-WRT thing, it doesn't apply to Asus routers.

 

[agilani]

I find that in repeater mode even if the page does not show in the menu you can still browse directly to the URL to configure some features. You'll need to find the dhcp address of your repeater to access it directly (unless you setup a static ip that does not conflict with your router).

Like Colin said, access the menu and disable all smb features.

 

[snagglewest]

Just to close this one solved; I finally had time to dive deeper into this last night. I found the Samba Share info located under:

USB Application >>> Media Services and Servers >>> Network Place (Samba) Share / Cloud Disk

Not the most intuitive location and the manual is a bit sparse on the topic. The bottom line is even if the "Enable Share" button is OFF, the "Work Group" and "Force as Master Browser" settings are still active and need to be set appropriately.

Thanks for those that pointed me in the right direction and hopefully this will help someone else facing the same problem in the future.

Snag

 

[mink]

Thanks for this, just found this helpful to solve similar issue while bringing up samba shares on my mixed samba/nfs/zfs windows/linux network. Set gateway router as master (RT-AC86u) which I hope is correct. Just a small net, no AD. no WINS. The 86u does local DNS and DHCP. cheers