ZenWiFi AX Mesh - 2nd 5GHz band on one node shuts down from time to time

[Mikael]

I run a setup with three ZenWiFi AX routers in a Mesh setup with Ethernet backhaul, i.e. the 2nd 5GHz band is in use for clients. I can see that on one of the nodes, the 2nd 5GHz band shuts down from time to time, where as all other bands and nodes remaining online 100% of the time. If I reboot the node, the problem goes away for a while, but reappears again after some time. Anyone seen anything similar. Could this be a HW fault or perhaps some power saving etc. built in functionality that shuts down the 2nd radio if the1st radio is not being used. This node is in a location where it primarily serves only LAN based devices, and WiFi devices only sporadically. The screenshot from inSSIDer shows the problem where the 2nd 5GH band on one node has been "dead" for 505min.

I am running the latest firmware (9.0.0.4.386_41994) on all nodes.
I use only one SSID and Smart Connect.
WiFi settings are primarily at their factory default settings.
I have disabled the 160GHz band on the 2nd 5GHz radio.
I have reported this to Asus support, but not received any feedback from there yet.

 

[Tucu]

Any DFS related warning in the logs of that AP?

 

[Mikael]

Any DFS related warning in the logs of that AP?

Hi, good suggestion, but not as far as I can tell for channel 100.

 

[Tucu]

The next thing I would try is to disable Smart Connect (and AI Mesh) then just configure them as access points with manual channel selection (maybe avoiding the DFS channels). A futher step would be disabling the 2x2 radios.

 

[Mikael]

Well, I would not like to disable these features in order to get it to work. I have come to the conclusion that this setup is good for roaming between nodes, uninterrupted connections, WiFi calls, online meetings etc. while moving around in th ebuilding. In fact, the missing 5GHz-2 band has no real negative impact on the network as such as it sits in a room where I only randomly have WiFi clients. The network quality is perfect for my 1Gbps fiber connection offering stable WiFi connections up to 1000Mbps and low latency. So I am really happy with that, Smart Connect, Mesh and the Ethernet backhaul. I just want to make sure that the node is not defect while it is still under warranty.