Vodafone Mesh Wifi Extender Sagemcom Fast286

[doby]

How can I get my hands on one of the mesh wifi extenders (Sagemcom Fast286) without subscribing to the Pro plan?

I don't need everything the Pro plan provides, I just need better wifi coverage in one room and presumably these units have been tuned to work with the Vodafone Wifi Hub. 

Are these sold standalone?

Edit: 

I've been doing a bit of digging about and it seems Irish provider 'Eir' are offering this extender (albeit in the standard Sagemcom case design) as a standalone product for €99. There are various other providers throughout Europe who have licensed them but I can't actually find them on thier websites.

It says on the Eir product page it works with all broadband providers but I have my doubts if it'll intergrate the way I want it to, I'd presume it would need the Vodafone firmware. 

Vodafone want to charge £312 over course of the contract for them.... (admittedly you can request up to 3). Why not sell them standalone too?

[CrimsonLiar]

If you cannot set it up using the guide at:  https://manuals.plus/sagemcom/fast286-mesh-wifi-extender-manual (treat this external link with extreme caution!) Then I don't think you are going to have much luck.  It's quite possible that the code to perform the custom pairing is missing from your router and the pairing for branded versions of the extender may be different to retail versions (if these even exist).

[Terand]

Hi

Thank you. Seems to be working now. Used the WPS to pair.  All the lights are correct colour. How do I know if my devices are connected to the extender or the router as they both have the same SSID?

[CrimsonLiar]

With any kind of WEBUI on the mesh unit, the only real way is to use look at the MAC addresses that your devices are connected to and check if they are the router or the extender.  While the SSIDs are the same the connection MAC will be different when checked from the devices themselves!

As a quick check, if devices are connecting to the extender, they'll probably not show in the list of connected devices on the router!

[Jayach]

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@CrimsonLiar wrote:

As a quick check, if devices are connecting to the extender, they'll probably not show in the list of connected devices on the router!

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I think they probably will show, as the routers DHCP will still need to give them an IP address.

[CrimsonLiar]

It depends on how the code for the WEBUI is written. The lists for the device leases and connected devices can be different, so it makes sense to usually show the list of connected devices and not the leases.  If you relied on the lease list, you'd also not see any devices with Static IPs (defined on the device), though fixed manual IPs (defined on the router) may show, and the lease list will* contain devices that are no longer connected but where the lease is still valid!

[doby]

Same manufacturer as the Wifi Hub and will have been optimised for performance.