376.44 - Unable to change SSID

[F5ing]

Really odd.

Only two things I can think of right off the bat:

Even though you're wired, is your wireless NIC also enabled (and set to automatically connect)? I really don't think this would be an issue, but a shot in the dark...

Did you try a reset with the WPS button? Or do a reset from the Admin page?

 

[cofetym]

Speed lever contact Asus when you have time to see if they can get this sorted. I'm thinking that you might possibly have a bad router.

 

[john9527]

One thing I just noticed.....in all of your screenshots, the WPA Encryption pulldown is blank. For me, that automatically fills in with AES if you select WPA2-Personal. Can you actually select something in that field?

 

[lancer73]

Another longshot, what browser plugins do you have?

I'm a Lastpass user and if I let Lastpass log me in on the router, the SSID changes.

[edit]
Looking at the screenshot's I get the feeling you are a Lastpass user as wel...
[/edit]

 

[F5ing]

[edit]
Looking at the screenshot's I get the feeling you are a Lastpass user as wel...
[/edit]

Is that was those little icons are next to the password fields?

I was wondering if the OP added those to the screenshots...

 

[lancer73]

Is that was those little icons are next to the password fields?



I was wondering if the OP added those to the screenshots...

Yep. I wouldn't be suprised if TS either renames the admin account to WLAN, or has the network keys filed under WLAN in Lastpass.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[speedlever]

lancer73, I think you may be on to something with your Last Pass observation. I'll check my LP library and see if there's an entry for the 192.168.1.1 address/WLAN and kill it if so.

That might be the issue right there. You have a sharp eye for catching detail!

F5ing, I did try holding WPS down while powering the router. No change.

john9527, not sure why that's blank. If I open the pull down, I see AES and can choose it. But it doesn't seem to stay visible.

It will be probably be sometime tonight before I will have a chance to work on this again.

 

[lancer73]

The blank fields can also be caused by the Lastpass plugin, at least, I have observed that behavior on my pc as well.

I would completely disable lastpass and try again.

[edit]
The autofill feature can be especially dangerous.
[/edit]

 

[dlandiss]

Question for the gurus: is 20MHz spacing a radius or diameter? In the screenshot above, it appears that the base of all wifi signals spans 40 MHz. So I assume 20 MHz spacing is 20 MHz either side of the nominal freq. Is that correct?

Be aware that the curves shown in inSSIDer are idealized approximations, not actual bandwidth. To see actual bandwidth we would need a spectrum analyzer like Wi-Spy.

The idealized approximations suggest that WiFi signals are spread out over four channels -- plus/minus two from the control channel. That is why channels 1, 6 and 11 are recommended. In truth, the vast majority of the transmitted energy is only about three channels wide (plus/minus 1.5 from the control channel).

In the attached spectrum analyzer scan the horizontal scale is 10MHz/division and the vertical scale is 10dB/division. You can see that the WiFi signals are less than 20MHz wide at 20dB down (1% of the power) from the center of the channel, and barely 20MHz wide at 30dB down (0.1% of the power). That suggests that interference from any channel three or more digits away is less than often supposed.

Thus we could probably be using channels 1, 4, 7, 10, (and 13 in many countries). It is too late now to try to get everybody to change, so unless the FCC opens up some new channels we are stuck. Or, if you see a channel with very low existing signal levels that are two channels or more away, go ahead and try it!

More details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels.

 

[cofetym]

Lancer73 is definitely on the ball. I use Last Pass also put not for my Routers. His suggestion should definitely get things sorted Speedlever.

 

[speedlever]

Great info dlandiss. Looking at the site survey in post 8, it seems to me that channel 3 or 4 is optimum if that stays static.

 

[F5ing]

Lancer73 is definitely on the ball. I use Last Pass also put not for my Routers. His suggestion should definitely get things sorted Speedlever.

Yep, definitely a good catch by lancer73. Good chance that was the whole problem to begin with.

 

[F5ing]

Great info dlandiss. Looking at the site survey in post 8, it seems to me that channel 3 or 4 is optimum if that stays static.

Probably a good idea to re-survey from time to time. Apparently a lot of folks around me have their router's channel selection set to auto, very few seem to be manually set. Most of them are all over the place -- very few stick to the same channel. I'm fortunate that their signals aren't really strong enough to cause any real interference for me (hopefully they find the same with my signals).

EDIT: Just reread your post that I quoted. I must've quit reading before I got to the last period (apparently I didn't see "if that stays static" when I first read it).

 

[speedlever]

Good news! Thanks to Lancer's sharp eye, I killed all references in Last Pass to 192.168.1.1 and now I no longer have the mystery of the changing SSID. In addition, AES now also stays visible.

Yay! At last I can play with my new router. I've already reloaded Merlin's 376.44 and did some basic configuring.

Thanks for all the help. This was very much under the radar and I'm not sure I would have ever figured out the issue. I certainly didn't expect Last Pass to be the culprit here. Just goes to show how user induced issues can sneak up and bite you in the butt.

 

[F5ing]

Good to hear! Time to settle in and have some fun with it.

 

[cofetym]

Stop! Now you have to install 376.45.

 

[RMerlin]

Issues caused by Lastpass aren't new BTW. Their new feature that inserts asterisks inside text fields will also cause issues with the router's webui as it messes with the CSS.

 

[KevTech]

I use lastpass for the router login without any issues.

I have the router entry set to Never Autofill and then in lastpass setting > never URLs I have router IP set to never add site and never show context icons.

 

[speedlever]

Yeah, I had LP set to autofill on 192.168.1.1... which worked great on my WRT54G... but not so great on my N66U when I wanted to change SSIDs. The autofill doesn't always autofill... or maybe I had mis-remembered how I had it set up. But I didn't think it would autofill unless I clicked that icon in the SSID field. Oh well.

The ultimate irony is that when I have time to test, I may end up using the same SSID for both bands and APs instead of separate SSIDs. (And yes, I've already read the thread about using the same or different SSIDs for both bands.)

But at least I now know what was causing that unexpected behavior.

Thanks again for all the good help. This new router will take me places I've never explored before in networking, so I have some studyin' to do.

Edit: and speaking of .45... I may try .42 and .43 and see if I can tell any range differences. Thus far .44 seems to be about the same range on 2.4GHz as the old WRT... which ranges pretty much farther than 5GHz, as expected.

 

[F5ing]

Do let us know how it goes with your testing.

I'm about to do the same as I'm quite a few firmwares behind. At one point, before the Lastpass revelation, I was even thinking those icons in your screenshots might've been newer firmware "enhancements" that hadn't seen documented and I wasn't familiar with.