Host wired to node temporarily inaccessible when roaming on AiMesh

[phipe]

Hi,

I'm banging my head on a problem here, I hope you can help me solve. I have an AiMesh setup with two AX92U routers (one master, one slave) with a wireless backbone (unfortunately not able to cable them). It's now running Merlin (Gnuton, build 388.2.2), but I've used the official AsusWRT previously with same results. I have an iPhone and laptop which roams between the two nodes when moving between rooms, this works well. However, I experience that accessing a host that is cabled with ethernet to the slave AX92U becomes temporarily unavailable when moving around, and I suspect this is due to the romaing. A couple of minutes later the machine can be accessed again, for example through a webbrowser towards it's 10.x.x.x IP or with SSH. Meanwhile the phone can access any website on the internet through a browser, so there's connectivity to the Asus and gateway.

Any help greatly appreaciated - thanks in advance!

 

[L&LD]

Welcome to the forums @phipe.

Try/test with the simplest things first.

Go to AiMesh, System Settings, and perform a System reboot. Does this help?

If not, try powering down your entire network (modem/ONT, router, switches, and all client devices) wait a few minutes, then power them up again in the following sequence.

Power on the modem/ONT. Wait 5 minutes for it to stabilize, after it is fully powered up. Power on the router, and switches. Wait for the router to stabilize for at least 5 minutes, after it has fully booted up. Power up the AiMesh node, and wait 5 minutes. Power on all wired devices. Power on all wireless devices. After an hour or so, I would perform a System Reboot once more.

 

[phipe]

Thanks @L&LD, but no, this is not something that resolves it. Have tried those steps earlier. I suspect it's something about when the routing table is loaded, but need somebody more network-savvy to help here.

 

[Morris]

Hi,

I'm banging my head on a problem here, I hope you can help me solve. I have an AiMesh setup with two AX92U routers (one master, one slave) with a wireless backbone (unfortunately not able to cable them). It's now running Merlin (Gnuton, build 388.2.2), but I've used the official AsusWRT previously with same results. I have an iPhone and laptop which roams between the two nodes when moving between rooms, this works well. However, I experience that accessing a host that is cabled with ethernet to the slave AX92U becomes temporarily unavailable when moving around, and I suspect this is due to the romaing. A couple of minutes later the machine can be accessed again, for example through a webbrowser towards it's 10.x.x.x IP or with SSH. Meanwhile the phone can access any website on the internet through a browser, so there's connectivity to the Asus and gateway.

Any help greatly appreaciated - thanks in advance!

How is a wired device moving around? It's is wired, then replace the cable.

 

[phipe]

Thanks @Morris, perhaps I was unclear. The linux box that becomes temporarily inaccessible is wired to the slave node, so:

(AX92U Master) <--- Wireless backhaul AiMesh ---> (AX92U Slave Node) <--- Ethernet Cable ---> (Linux box)

So when a AiMesh wifi-connected iPhone or Laptop roams between the Master and Slave Node, I lose ssh connection/cannot reconnect to the Linux box on it's IP address for a couple of minutes. I suspect it happens when roaming from slave to master, but haven't been able to confirm yet.

 

[Morris]

I'd be surprised if it's the roam that is causing the issue. Take a carful look at the quality of your backhaul wireless network. Have you dedicated it to backhaul? Are nearby network sharing the same channel? What happens if you load the backhaul and then ping across it? If you are using auto channel try specifying one.

Good luck

 

[phipe]

Exactly why I'm banging my head as well. There's a dedicated 5ghz band used for backhaul and AsusWRT-Merlin reports that quality is "Great".

I tried repeated pings from iphone (HE tools app which has ping) to the linux box and moved around the house. As soon as I (presumably) roam I start seeing packet drops. Guess next attempt could be to bind the iphone to a single AiMesh node and see if that changes anything.

 

[Morris]

Try pinging the wired box from the router. The iPhone may have issues till it completes it's roam.