Strange OpenWrt Archer C7 problem

Hello,

I wanted to take you through the steps I have done because this is VERY strange.

  1. I bought some Archer C7 version 5 routers.
  2. IMPORTANT: If I don't touch the C7 router out of the box and I connect it directly to my home router, then I connect that to my computer to use an ethernet connection, everything works great. I can ping a location and I don't have time outs. It works beautifully.
  3. In order to program our C7 routers to use captive portal, we install the latest version of OpenWRT by going into the tplink admin and then doing a firmware upgrade. We have done this with past versions without a problem.
  4. We create an open wireless network that uses captive portal to ask the user for name and email and then it puts them into the internet. This is fairly straight forward. This has always worked find in the past.
  5. My partner has a PC and Android devices. He does the exact same process and everything works as expected for him.

Now, keep in mind in step 2, I connected the new router out of the box to my Mac and everything was fine. Now, I am going to test out the router after following the same exact process my partner followed.

  1. Once I connect through wifi and get through captive portal, my internet connections are not very stable. So we decided to ping a location. We see something like below, meaning it is somehow losing connection.
    PING a1799.dscb.akamai.net (23.55.241.27): 56 data bytes
    64 bytes from 23.55.241.27: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=5.482 ms
    64 bytes from 23.55.241.27: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=4.601 ms
    64 bytes from 23.55.241.27: icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=5.190 ms
    Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
    Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
    Request timeout for icmp_seq 5
    Request timeout for icmp_seq 6

  2. I decided to ssh into openWRT in the router and then run the ping. PERFECT. No problem when I ping from inside the router.

  3. I then decided to connect the new programmed router directly to my mac using an ethernet cable. I got the same error as above. Numbers were a little different but the point is that it timed out.
    PING a1799.dscb.akamai.net (23.55.241.27): 56 data bytes
    64 bytes from 23.55.241.27: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=5.482 ms
    64 bytes from 23.55.241.27: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=4.601 ms
    64 bytes from 23.55.241.27: icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=5.190 ms
    Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
    Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
    Request timeout for icmp_seq 5
    Request timeout for icmp_seq 6

We have no idea why it won't work correctly on the mac. We have checked all of our versions to make sure everything is up to date and correct.

Not sure where to go from here.

Any help would be appreciated.

What is the output of ifconfig

You can't daisy chain two routers that have the same subnet. Double check each router is on a different subnet.

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