5Ghz goes down

[Jong]

I'm talking about burst of attempts. With the iPhones maybe 3 or 4 together several times a day. With the iPad, sometimes it goes on and on and on....

 

[mattiL]

I'm talking about burst of attempts. With the iPhones maybe 3 or 4 together several times a day. With the iPad, sometimes it goes on and on and on....

Try to use 2.4GHz network on the iPad, see if it makes a difference (it did for me!).

 

[sfx2000]

Couple of things to try on your iPad (or other iOS device)

1) Settings/Privacy/Location Services/System Services - you should see a setting called "WiFi Networking" - turn that off - this won't disable your WiFi, just the location priority - give that a try

2) Reset Networking via Settings/General/Reset - reset just the network settings, and then once it reboots and comes back up, go ahead and connect back to the AP

This is applicable mostly for 8.*, but also works with 9.*

The earlier WiFi issues with apple gear running 8.0-8.4.1 and Mac OS 10.10-10.10.3 was something different...

 

[Jong]

To be clear, there's no real problem observed here with the IPad, until 5Ghz falls over on the ac87 of course. It's just curious seeing continual DHCP activity. Here there is now only about 3mins typically between DHCP requests - all the iDevices making requests, my iPad Air 2 the worse, sometimes continually for hours.

I've tried resetting network settings on the Air 2 and will see if it makes a difference.

 

[mattiL]

Couple of things to try on your iPad (or other iOS device)

1) Settings/Privacy/Location Services/System Services - you should see a setting called "WiFi Networking" - turn that off - this won't disable your WiFi, just the location priority - give that a try

2) Reset Networking via Settings/General/Reset - reset just the network settings, and then once it reboots and comes back up, go ahead and connect back to the AP

This is applicable mostly for 8.*, but also works with 9.*

The earlier WiFi issues with apple gear running 8.0-8.4.1 and Mac OS 10.10-10.10.3 was something different...

I tried your tricks, no luck.
In fact, it seems the the DHCP renewals have increased, with an interval of 1-3 minutes now with iPad sleeping.

Back to 2.4GHz..

 

[Hydro]

I tried your tricks, no luck.
In fact, it seems the the DHCP renewals have increased, with an interval of 1-3 minutes now with iPad sleeping.

Back to 2.4GHz..

I'm in the same boat with the constant DHCP renewals, but with an iphone 6 on 5ghz.

This behavior started after upgrading to iOS 9, which seems odd, but who knows - sooooo many moving parts to consider when trying to isolate what the culprit could be (Bad router hardware [quantenna 5ghz]?, Did I screw something up in my router config? Is iOS9 whacked? Is my iPhone somehow goofed up config-wise?)

The only other thing I have on my 5ghz net is an older (non "ac" client) MacBook Air on Yosemite, and that connection's been rock-solid. I've now got the iPhone moved over to the 2.4 ghz net, and so far, so good.

Fingers crossed that a future Quantenna update may bring salvation to the 5ghz net!

Cheers, Chris

 

[Jong]

I'm also getting frequent disconnections when sleeping on 5Ghz following IOS9 update (probably related), sigh! Hopefully they will fix with the planned October stable release. But who's to say we won't all be in trouble again when IOS10 arrives. Infuriating!

 

[mike2h]

has asus actually acknowledged this problem?

 

[Jong]

The thing is this is all running Merlin, which is based off the 6xxx series of Asus builds. Asus are testing 8xxx now. So they are not going to be interested in anything here.

I have no idea at this point if this could be a Merlin bug. My guess is not, but I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure it arrived after the 4xxx series of builds anyway, so one option is to try regressing to Merlin using those builds, another is to try the latest Asus build. But, at the moment, I've upgraded my AP to the same Merlin version to see if that too starts dropping 5GHZ.

 

[sfx2000]

Hmmm... did some digging, and something else to try iPhones/iPads

1) in the iDevice, go to Settings/General/About - Select Name - and give the device a unique name (e.g something else other than iPhone or iPad) - some DHCP servers get confused here, as binding a name to multiple MAC addreses is a general cause - changing the name here sorts it..

2) Once step 1 is done, then with the same "name" reserve the IP address in the static/ip reservations...

see if that helps..

 

[Hydro]

Thanks sfx2000 - that sure sounds like a reasonable enough thing to try out.. I just set it up on my iPhone, and I'll check in later this evening with a report on how it's holdin' up!

Cheers, Chris

 

[sfx2000]

Thanks sfx2000 - that sure sounds like a reasonable enough thing to try out.. I just set it up on my iPhone, and I'll check in later this evening with a report on how it's holdin' up!

Cheers, Chris

I know it sounds silly, but in a household full of iDevices (multiple iPhones and iPads), I've given them each a unique name, and I have not had a lot of the issues that folks have reported (I use characters from Breaking Bad, so I've got walter, skylar, etc...)

 

[Hydro]

So far, still goin' like a champ - since doing your steps in post 50 a ~4 hours ago, even when waking from sleep, the iPhone has been consistently showing a nice & steady "T-Mobile Wi-Fi" connection, so that's a huge improvement from previous days (since i0s 9 upgrade) when it was struggling & failing to maintain any inkling of a wifi connection at all on 5ghz.

Well, I probably just jinxed this recent good fortune by making this post here , so I'll check in again tomorrow evening with an additional report!

Cheers, Chris

 

[Jong]

My iPad already had a unique name. It doesn't have a static address, but then neither do the other devices that are not similarly affected. I did say that other iDevices occasionally request multiple times but for the iPad Air 2 it is crazy. Even after resetting network settings the iPad was requesting from sleep every 4 minutes all last night.

Small sample:

Sep 23 02:46:06 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa
Sep 23 02:46:06 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa Jons-iPad
Sep 23 02:49:27 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa
Sep 23 02:49:27 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa Jons-iPad
Sep 23 02:52:37 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa
Sep 23 02:52:37 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa Jons-iPad
Sep 23 02:55:47 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa
Sep 23 02:55:47 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa Jons-iPad
Sep 23 02:59:08 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa
Sep 23 02:59:08 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa Jons-iPad
Sep 23 03:02:34 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa
Sep 23 03:02:34 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa Jons-iPad
Sep 23 03:05:32 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.0.4 b0:46:fc:5a:af:96
Sep 23 03:05:32 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.0.4 b0:46:fc:5a:af:96 SureSignal
Sep 23 03:06:04 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa
Sep 23 03:06:04 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa Jons-iPad
Sep 23 03:07:29 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPREQUEST(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa
Sep 23 03:07:29 dnsmasq-dhcp[683]: DHCPACK(br0) 192.168.0.254 d0:4f:7e:41:b0:aa Jons-iPad

 

[mike2h]

Hmmm... did some digging, and something else to try iPhones/iPads

1) in the iDevice, go to Settings/General/About - Select Name - and give the device a unique name (e.g something else other than iPhone or iPad) - some DHCP servers get confused here, as binding a name to multiple MAC addreses is a general cause - changing the name here sorts it..

2) Once step 1 is done, then with the same "name" reserve the IP address in the static/ip reservations...

see if that helps..

giving it a shot myself. thx either way.

 

[Jong]

Statically assigning the address has not worked for me. Still requests an IP every 3-4 mins. Very odd. I changed the IP to 192.168.0.7, in case the every high IP was a problem, but no change.

 

[Jong]

I think a background app may be responsible for this DHCP problem. I methodically went through and closed all apps on my iPad and the requests stopped. Note: even restarting the iPad leaves the same long list of open apps

Of course, it's quite possible this is completely unrelated to the crashes on 5Ghz. Let's see what happens over the next few days.

 

[Jong]

Interesting I have discovered that I always get 2 of these BootP messages in the log when I restart my ac87u AP. So, it's possible that none of them are coming from the router, but instead from my AP, or both the AP and the Router can generate them?? No doubt however, that when they appear endlessly the 5Ghz radio on the router (not AP) falls over.

All having this problem, no chance we all have APs as well as routers is there? Probably not, but it might be another pointer to the problem.

The MAC address is registered to Quantenna, so it seems maybe, just maybe the Quantennna on the AP might be tripping up the chip on the router?? I have not seen another 5Ghz crash since I updated my AP to the same version of Merlin (previously it was on ASUSWRT 378.4950). Too early to say really, but maybe having an AP on one firmware and the router on another is not ideal??

RMerlin may look at all this and laugh! We are groping around in the dark here it is true. But slowly we may be building a picture of what causes these BOOTP messages and how the 5Ghz crash is caused.

 

[Hydro]

I think a background app may be responsible for this DHCP problem. I methodically went through and closed all apps on my iPad and the requests stopped. Note: even restarting the iPad leaves the same long list of open apps

Of course, it's quite possible this is completely unrelated to the crashes on 5Ghz. Let's see what happens over the next few days.

Too funny -- I considered that very same explanation too, since most of my fixes have been a combination of things --> "OK, now that I did those new steps here, did I remember to reset Network Settings this time? Or did I close out all apps prior to restarting? Is it a full moon yet? Etc, Etc..."

My iPhone is behaving very nicely on 5ghz right now, but I'm not very optimistic that the issue is "solved" yet -- I've enjoyed brief periods in the past where the iPhone does well for a time on 5 ghz, but then suddenly implodes on that net for reason I cannot yet identify.

But hey - I'll take what I can get - I'm definitely happy it's working well now, and I'm always grateful for new tricks & tips (thank you again sfx2000)

Onward!!

Cheers, Chris

 

[Jong]

I think a background app may be responsible for this DHCP problem. I methodically went through and closed all apps on my iPad and the requests stopped.

Nah! Another red herring! As others have observed if it settles on 2.4Ghz it will stay connected, but if it is on 5Ghz it keeps re-requesting an IP and that's because it keeps dropping off the network

Sado that I am, I have been sitting watching what is happening with the Merlin Wireless Network Log in one browser window and the System Log in another and actually it's as clear as day what happens:

- iPad joins 5Ghz network and asks for an IP. Rx/Tx rate is high, say 650/650.
- After about 30-40 secs it drops to 7/650.
- After about another 30-40 secs the iPad vanishes from the 5Ghz network
- 1-2mins later the iPad rejoins and the cycle repeats.

But, I really don't think this has anything to do with the subject of this thread now. I think this is unrelated and just an example of 5Ghz device disconnection during sleep that we have been struggling with since this router came out. Why it's started again with IOS9, I don't know. Why only the iPad? Don't know either. I have my iPhone 6 here right next to the iPad and it stays rock solid on the 5Ghz network, as do our other older iDevices. The iPad is the only one to offer 2x2, so I guess that could be it. But I see others have problems with their iPhones, so who the heck knows!