We've had an Archer VR1600V for a while that came with our Australian NBN connection. Due to its age, it was struggling a bit with all the wireless devices that we had connected to it (multiple computers, smart lights, phones, tablets, etc.). So I recently bought an Archer AX50 with the intention of "boosting" the wifi, and having that handle the majority of the wireless network while the VR1600V takes care of the internet connection.

The problem is, when I set the AX50 in "Access Point" mode (auto disabled NAT, etc., and I manually disabled DHCP) and set the WiFi SSID/Passwords to be identical, the AX50 doesn't seem to interact/do any wifi at all! It shows zero devices under "wireless clients", when I'd expect to see at least a couple (e.g. the iPad that's in the same room as it).

To check whether this was the case, I turned off the wifi on my main router (the VR1600V), but then the internet/wifi doesn't work at all. Presumably because the AX50 is just an "access point", so disabling the main wifi source disables it too.

EDIT: For clarification, the AX50 AP is connected via ethernet to the VR1600V main modem router using LAN ports on both ends. I've also assigned a static IP to the AX50 (192.168.1.2). Can anyone shed any light on my predicament? It's probably a simple fix, but most of my network-savvy comes from speed-reading webpages and forum posts.

EDIT2: I seem to have a workaround that's given me what I want. I've disabled DHCP on my main (internet-facing) router, but enabled it on the second (more advanced, access point) router. Everything's working, but it feels like I did a bad thing. I've read that the internet-facing router should always have DHCP enabled, but isn't DHCP responsible for assigning IPs on the local network, whereas NAT (which is still enabled on the main router) is the thing that translates between local IPs and internet IPs? Totally open to suggestions and comments, as I'm learning this as I go!