Help with Zen ET12 system - 2.4 GHz constantly disconnecting

[MattaviusX]

Hey All, first time posting. I'm NOT a networking guy, but fairly savvy with computers in general. Hoping someone has some insight. I recently upgraded our network and I'm at the end of my rope about to send it back.

Before starting I should say that I had none of these issues on my old setup, but unfortunately my coverage wasn't sufficient, had trouble reaching the far Ring cameras. They would connect, but poor/choppy performance, so figured time for an upgrade.

I have a setup with one zenwifi pro ET12 router and 3 wired access points set up to run as a "mesh" system in Asus's software. The system works great with 5GHz and 6GHz clients, but performance on 2.4 GHz is driving me crazy. Sometimes it will work for a while, but then it will start kicking all clients from the 2.4 GHz band. I first noticed when all our Ring cameras were going off line, so I tried connecting my phone (Samsung) and iPad to the 2.4 GHz band and saw that I would constantly get kicked from the network and get into a loop where I was "Discovering" (in the Asus app), then briefly connected then connected with no Internet, then booted again.

I'm not using Smart Connect, each band has a separate SSID

Using Wifi Analyzer I don't see any interference, but I tried changing the channel anyway.

So far I've changed the following settings:

• Changed 2.4 GHz control channel to 11
• Set 2.4Ghz to 20 MHz channel width
• Disabled roaming assistant for 2.4 GHz band
• Changed 2.4 GHz control channel to 1

I've been going crazy trying to figure this out. The changes above don't look like much, but there's been a TON of router/modem reboots, reading articles, fiddling with different clients etc..

I'm at the point of calling "hardware issue" and returning, but everything except the 2.4 GHz band works great and it's a bit of a hassle since I have to ship everything back from Hawaii. Plus I did many hours of research to land on this solution for us in the first place (price/performance/our needs).

Any ideas are MUCH appreciated!

 

[Tech9]

See this similar thread and try the suggested 2.4GHz band changes:

Rog Rapture GT-AX6000: IoT devices continuosly disconnected

Hello everyone, First post here, but I've read a lot of this forum over the last 3 years. I'm having a problem with my Rog Rapture GT-AX6000 (latest Merlin firmware 3004.388.8_2, but also with previous firmware the behaviour was the same), with some of my IoT devices: Amazon Blink Cam (2 mini...

www.snbforums.com

 

[MattaviusX]

Thanks for responding!

I did see that post, but it seemed mostly geared towards backwards compatibility with old devices, but I'm having the issues on Samsung S24 Ultra and 2024 iPad as well so I suspected something different.

I'll go ahead and try the recommended changes over there. Can't hurt at this point.

 

[MattaviusX]

Just to close the loop in case anyone stumbles across this post. I tried every suggestion available tinkering with settings and nothing helped.

What finally solved all my issues was to bail on the "AI mesh with wireless backhaul" and set up each node in Access Point mode. Then I made sure the nodes closer to each other were broadcasting on different channels.

You lose the ability to manage everything in one place, but gain fine grain control of each AP.

In my case the difference was astonishing. All connection issues disappeared and my cameras all come up right away with no big delays or "offline" issues!

I can only assume that in AI mesh mode all the nodes broadcasting on the same channel was just causing too much interference.

 

[collector930]

Just to close the loop in case anyone stumbles across this post. I tried every suggestion available tinkering with settings and nothing helped.

What finally solved all my issues was to bail on the "AI mesh with wireless backhaul" and set up each node in Access Point mode. Then I made sure the nodes closer to each other were broadcasting on different channels.

You lose the ability to manage everything in one place, but gain fine grain control of each AP.

In my case the difference was astonishing. All connection issues disappeared and my cameras all come up right away with no big delays or "offline" issues!

I can only assume that in AI mesh mode all the nodes broadcasting on the same channel was just causing too much interference.

It's good that you found the solution.

I wonder if reducing the wireless Tx Power for 2.4 Ghz will accomplish the same thing, but let you stay in AI Mesh mode?

 

[MattaviusX]

It's good that you found the solution.

I wonder if reducing the wireless Tx Power for 2.4 Ghz will accomplish the same thing, but let you stay in AI Mesh mode?

Thanks for responding!

I did think about that.

I didn't want to turn down the power too much because one of the goals was to better reach some cameras on/in our detached garage, but I'm guessing if I fiddled with it enough I could probably get a decent setting that would reach everywhere I needed without interfering with the other nodes.

In the end, after going through the original troubleshooting and the whole effort to convert them to APs (and getting a good result) I don't have the energy to mess with it any more LOL