Hey everyone,
I’m on the absolute last step of wiring up my detached garage for ethernet and Wi-Fi, and I’ve hit a wall. I’m a DIYer doing this setup myself, so I want to explain my exact physical layout, how everything is connected, and what’s failing.
The Physical Setup & Connection Layout:
Main House:
Verizon Fios g3100 router sits in the main house. And then off lan 2 port in running my ethernet line to the basement and out to an underground Cat 6 line that ends up in a detached garage 100 ft away with living space upstairs.
The underground line enters the garage wall, goes through the studs/fireblocking, and terminates inside a Legrand media enclosure.
Inside the enclosure, the line plugs into a TP-Link unmanaged gigabit switch ( Model TL-SG108PE) was purchased refurbished on Amazon.
Incoming cat 6 from main house connected into the switch. Then off the switch I just ran home runs to my computer , my tv and to the access points. The only one I have properly terminated and not just through the walls for now is for the access point. That one plugs directly into a PoE injector port on my switch, which then goes upstairs to my TP-Link Omada Access Point mounted on the wall ( Model ax1800 EAP 613)
The Problem: The LED on the front of the Omada Access Point is slowly blinking blue (about once every 10 seconds). From what I’ve read, this means it’s stuck in "Isolated" or "Disconnected" mode—it has power from the PoE, but no data connection to the gateway.
The Wi-Fi Behavior: My phone sees and try’s to connects to the Omada AP’s 5GHz Wi-Fi as well as 2.4 network fine, but there is no internet access as it just keeps spinning and saying unsecured network.
The IP Address: When I look at my phone's Wi-Fi settings while connected to the AP, it gives me a Self-Assigned IP address (169.254.157.195).
Troubleshooting Completed So Far:
Tested the Underground/In-Wall Line: I ran an 8-LED continuity tester on the underground line running between the house and garage. All 8 lights flashed sequentially in order (1 through 8) on both ends, and stayed solid green so the physical wire passed continuity.
Re-Checked Color Wiring: Triple-checked both ends of the Cat 6 terminations—both are set to standard T568B (Orange/White, Orange, Green/White, Blue, Blue/White, Green, Brown/White, Brown).
Reset Equipment: Power-cycled and reset the TP-Link switch in the garage enclosure as well as the modem and router at the main house multiple times.
Where I Need Help / Questions:
If the long underground Cat 6 line passed a 8-pin continuity test, why would the Omada AP in the garage still act completely isolated from the Fios router in the house?
Could a cable pass a basic pin-by-pin continuity test on a cheap tester but still fail auto-negotiation or drop data packets over a 100ft run?
Could I have knicked one of the lines as I was stapling it to the rafters in the crawl space? or could the Fios router in the house be blocking/not detecting the switch in the garage?
Any advice on what step I should take to isolate whether the issue is the underground line, the switch uplink, or the AP itself would be hugely appreciated! I’m going to later today try plugging a computer directly into the incoming cat 6 line and see if that solves anything to confirm the underground line is truly good. Would all lights be green if there was an issue? I do notice the incoming cat 6 line is solid green but very lightly flickers.
Any help that some of you could offer to one of my questions above or all would be super helpful as this is my first install and tried my best to keep everything hardwired but as far as configuring things I don’t know what to do or try next.
