WiFi AiMesh disconnects for a few seconds

[OzarkEdge]

At the risk of offending anybody by replying to an old thread, I'm replying here because this thread best describes my problem and what I am hoping is a solution. I have an RT-AC1750 B1 (aka RT-AC66U B1) as the main router and four AiMesh nodes consisting of one RT-AC66U B1 and three RP-AC55 repeaters all connected via Ethernet. All are running the latest ASUS F/W as of the date of this post. No WiFi backhaul is being utilized. We were experiencing brief WiFi dropouts only from the nodes that might last up to 30 seconds and were very annoying. It has now been over 24 hours with no dropouts so, while it might be premature to claim victory, here's the changes I've made in the main router:

1. Turned ON 'Ethernet Backhaul' under AiMesh: System Settings. This alone made a significant improvement.
2. Disabled the four 'Beamforming' options under Wireless: Professional: on both the 2.4 & 5Ghz pages (each has two Beamforming settings). Since doing that no more dropouts have been seen.

Of course, if you have to use WiFi Backhaul you cannot do #1 as it completely disables WiFi Backhaul but it's worth trying #2 anyway.

Roughly how far apart are your 5 nodes?, which band was having WiFi connection issues?, and are you using different SSIDs for each band?

OE

 

[brobin]

Roughly how far apart are your 5 nodes?, which band was having WiFi connection issues?, and are you using different SSIDs for each band?

OE

From the main router one node is about 30 feet away to push a signal outside of the garage. Another node is about 60 feet away for the main living area and the other two are about 30 and 20 feet away to get signal through some walls. The connection issue is on both bands... the node would just stop transmitting completely and then come back. I do use different SSID's for each band i.e., myhouse and myhouse_A.

 

[OzarkEdge]

From the main router one node is about 30 feet away to push a signal outside of the garage. Another node is about 60 feet away for the main living area and the other two are about 30 and 20 feet away to get signal through some walls. The connection issue is on both bands... the node would just stop transmitting completely and then come back. I do use different SSID's for each band i.e., myhouse and myhouse_A.

Sounds like the nodes are fairly close, so clients may be seeing more than one strong signal to connect to. I would try raising (less negative) the Roaming Assistant RSSI threshold for each band by say 10-15 dBm.

I would keep Universal (implicit) Beamforming and Airtime Fairness disabled, but I would want to enable Explicit Beamforming since I've seen it affect connection quality... better wireless backhauls with it enabled.

OE

 

[brobin]

Sounds like the nodes are fairly close, so clients may be seeing more than one strong signal to connect to. I would try raising (less negative) the Roaming Assistant RSSI threshold for each band by say 10-15 dBm.

I would keep Universal (implicit) Beamforming and Airtime Fairness disabled, but I would want to enable Explicit Beamforming since I've seen it affect connection quality... better wireless backhauls with it enabled.

OE

Thanks for that info. I've just made those changes and will continue to monitor. About an hour ago I noticed that one of the RP-AC55's LED was red for about 30 seconds and then came back online - like it lost the Ethernet connection for a moment. Cables are good as is the switch it's plugged into. The only thing normally connected to that node is a phone and a tablet.

 

[levko123]

Interesting. Ever since updating to 3.0.0.4.386_41634-g08f88ae on my 3 68U's, every few days all my devices disconnect at around 00:00 GMT for a few moments. The only way I discovered it was that they would connect to another wifi router I don't use often.
I have always had airtime fairness, all beam forming On, and Roaming assistant off (my devices are usually smart enough to auto switch)