This past year I moved into a new house - 3000sq ft between 1st and 2nd floor. My home network setup is in the basement. Currently have a modem feeding into a Netgear RAX30 router (tri band WiFi 6), which then goes to a network switch for all my hardwired connections. No issues there.

I had noticed some WiFi dead spots in the furthest areas of the house, but I’ve been able to work around that until now. I just recently installed some smart lights in the front lawn area - Cync/GE bulbs that connect to my Google Home setup. The bulbs are too far from the router in the basement to properly connect.

I have a Netgear AC1900 6400EX mesh extender (dual band WiFi 5) which I just setup successfully (and it is set to extend, not access point). All lights are green, it shows up on my Netgear app as a device downstream of the router, and it is installed in an area between the router and the dead spots…but I’m not actually getting any WiFi signal extension. The signal still has the same dead spots.

The only other thing which is odd is that my iPhone WiFi signal is showing completely gray (zero bars) wherever I go in the house. I can still access the internet just fine in the areas I would expect to. The signal icon goes back to normal when I unplug the extender.

What am I missing here?