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@fred78 Currently there are two ways to connect two routers: wireless mesh mode or wired AP mode. And they work differently.

In wireless mesh mode, you only need to change the main node, and the changes will be automatically synced to the satellite node.

For wired AP connection, you have to make the changes individually. I would recommend a three step process:

1. Open the admin page for the AP (e.g., http://192.168.10.123), change the WiFi SSID to a temporary name.
2. Open the admin page for the router (e.g., http://192.168.10.1), change the WiFi password. Reconnect to the WiFi after the password change.
3. Open the admin page for the AP node again, update the WiFi SSID and password to what you want

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You can ask AI (e.g., Google) and get a good explanation, with a prompt like this:

The following is a POSIX regex. The only exception is . is a literal dot, but \. is a meta-character that matches a single character. What does it match: ^www.amazon.\.*

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~^(www.)?amazon. will block all domains starting with amazon., including amazon.it, amazon.com, amazon.es, plus www.amazon.*. But it will not block other subdomains besides www.

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First of all, ^ matches the beginning of the string. ~^www.amazon.com will match www.amazon.com but not 1www.amazon.com or a.www.amazon.com. Remember on pcWRT router, the dot without a leading \ matches the dot itself (unlike the standard regex, which matches any single character).

^(www.)?amazon.com matches both www.amazon.com and amazon.com (i.e., the grouping with a question mark matches the group 0 or 1 times).

~^www.amazon.\.* matches anything starting with www.amazon., e.g., www.amazon.com, www.amazon.us, www.amazon.eu etc.

~^(www\.)?amazon\.: the \ preceding the dot changes the meaning of the dot to match any single character. So this regex will match amazon.com, amazon-with-anything-else-here, because there is no end of string anchor $. Apparently, you want the dot to be a literal match here. Thus the correct regex should be: ~^(www.)?amazon., which would match amazon.anything-here, www.amazon.anything-here. But it would not match www.amazonaws.com, because a dot must follow amazon, not an a (in aws).

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This feature is available since v2.7.9. There’s an option to “Use random MAC address” under the Device Configuration section on the Wireless Settings page.

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Yes, you connect the router to the AP with an Ethernet cable. The ports on both ends need to be tagged and assigned to LAN.

Once you switch the AP router to AP mode, it will function as a DHCP client and need to grab an IP address from the router. If your AP emits a different SSID, and when you connect a device to that SSID, your device will get an IP address from the upstream router. If the connection between the AP and the router isn’t functioning, then your device won’t get an IP address

[support]

Firmware versions don’t need to match. The main requirement is that you connect a tagged port on the AX1800 to a tagged port on the Newifi. After you switch the Newifi to AP mode, it will get an IP address from the AX1800, so you should be able to “see” the Newifi (with an IP address assigned by the AX1800 via DHCP).

Ethernet port numbers are marked on the back of the router box. For some models the numbering is from left to right, others from right to left.

Now that you lost visibility into the Newifi, the best bet is to reset it and redo the AP mode switch over.

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Changing the LAN IP address to 10.0.0.1/24 won’t kick the router into a perpetual rebooting loop. Nor would changing DHCP params to 75 start, limit 200. Even though the latter gives invalid range (i.e., the max (75 + 200 -1) > 254), the router will clamp the max to 254. It must be something else that’s causing the perpetual reboot.

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Currently, the router doesn’t support suspending an SSID. You have to delete it and then recreate it when you need. Maybe we can add a switch in an update later.

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It seems that you are not using the 5Ghz band at all. So just disable it.

1. You can’t disable LAN SSID but enable SSIDs for other VLANs. So keep LAN SSID on, but set a strong password and keep it for yourself.
2. Work on the main router first. Connect your computer to it via the LAN SSID. On the Wireless Settings page, select “No Mesh”. Create additional SSIDs for Guest, X1, and X2. To be sure this is the router you’re working on, keep the AP router powered off at this point.
3. On the Network Settings page, select Router mode, assign X1 to Port 1, and X2 to Port 2, tag Port 3 but leave it on LAN. Keep the checkboxes below unchanged.
4. Power down the main router. Power up the AP router and connect to it via the LAN SSID. On the Wireless Settings page, select “No Mesh”. Create additional SSIDs for Guest, X1, and X2.
5. On the Network Settings page, select “Access Point” mode. Assign X1 to Port 1, and X2 to Port 2, tag Port 3 but leave it on LAN. Click Save and you’ll be notified that the router switched to AP mode.
6. Connect the main router to your ISP and power it up.
7. Connect the AP router Port 3 to the main router Port 3 and power it up
8. After both routers are powered up, go to the router admin page (i.e., http://192.168.10.1 if you didn’t change the LAN IP). You’ll see the AP router in the list of Connected Devices. Click on the hostname to give it a proper name. You can use the listed IP address to manage the AP router.

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@bambina We’ll review this and get back to you. Stay tuned.

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To answer your questions:

1. The initial set up creates two SSIDs (one for 2.4GHz, one for 5GHz), both are on the LAN. You can use them for whatever purpose you decide.
2. You don’t need to change any of these settings.
3. It’s the SOURCE/DESTINATION chart. It controls the routing between VLANs. By default, LAN can initiate communication with devices on other VLANs, but not vice versa. And only devices connected to LAN has the ability to log in the router.

Your intended setup is pretty complicated. While our router supports your usage scenario, I’d strongly suggest that you consult someone who can help you face-to-face. Some of your statements above were pretty confusing. For example:
x1 vlan will be for all tenants.
x1 vlan will be for all guests.
x1 vlan to be for all Owner IOT equipment (2.4Ghz Only.

Does that mean you wan to use X1 for all tenants, guests and IOT devices? If so, create an SSID on X1, give the WiFi password to tenants, guests, and connect your IoT devices to the SSID.

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Yes there’s an easy way to do this. In this guide I outlined how to establish a site-to-site VPN with both sides retaining Internet access from the local network: https://portal.pcwrt.com/blog/2026/08/05/pcwrt-vpn-router-business-site-to-site-wireguard/

You can adjust this setup slightly to achieve what you want. On the WireGuard client side (Router B in the guide), check the box:
Tunnel everything through WireGuard VPN except for the domains and IP ranges listed below, which will be sent through the alternative route.

Then, leave the text box below empty.

After this change, all traffic for devices connected to LAN on Router B will be routed through the VPN. However, on Router A, incoming VPN connections are allowed to destination LAN only. Internet bound traffic will be dropped.

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@bambina Follow the steps here to reset the router: https://portal.pcwrt.com/blog/2024/04/03/how-to-reset-the-pcwrt-router/

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Please check the timezone on your router.

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