techsupport

This is driving me nutty. I've got a Netgear Nighthawk router. It is set up with two WiFi SSIDs one for 2.4 and 5 GHz. Both are set to DHCP. I've got about 30 devices connected at any given time. Most of those are my smart bulbs, which are all connected on the 2.4 GHz channel. Occasionally, and seemingly randomly, my phones will drop connection and will not be able to reconnect. The phone can see the SSID broadcast for my network, it will attempt a connection, but the connection will be refused. I've tried forgetting and reconnecting to the network on my phone but that does nothing. I've tried a static IP, nope. The only thing that resolves it is restarting the router.

Whenever the routers reboots, it will deny all attempted connections unless I turn off all my smart bulbs and reconnect one at a time. If I do this I can get everything connected. But eventually my phone will get disconnected, usually from leaving the network range, and then won't be able to reconnect.

To make matters worse, I can't connect to the router via the gateway address, which I'm certain is correct. Neither the IP nor the netgear RouterLogin.net connect to the router's maintenance portal. I've been using the Nighthawk app to manage my network, which is limited to say the least.

I could use some helpful advice here. I'm about to just chuck the thing and get a new router.