I recently made some changes to my home network. I used to have 3 routers around the house for coverage with 3 diff SSID’s. I recently merged them into the same SSID for simplicity. I have an ASUS RT-N66U as my main router (controls DHCP) and 2 Dlink routers DIR-655 as the “extenders” with DHCP off.
Problem now is that all devices on WIFI lose signal or may have signal but dont seem to be connected. For example i have a google home nest max that will be connected for hours then all of a sudden say its disconnected. If i unplug it and plug it back in it finds the wifi and connects just fine… for a few hours then same issue. same goes with my Wemo light switches, cell phones, etc.
I dont know what the issue is… Do I have to manually assing everythings IP like this is an issue from the device hopping from 1 router to another based on signal strength and getting its IP changed?
All devices connected by ethernet cables have no issues.
What happens when one of your devices looses its signal? As in, are you able to ping it, does it loose it’s IP address, or what is it’s status? Are you able to ping from a wired device to one sitting on the WiFi? Also, what’s the setup with the “satellite extensions” as in are they bridges over WiFi or through a wired back hall just retransmitting the signal? Are they on their own subnet?
They are bridged via ethernet from the main router through a network switch. They are all set to the same subnet. I honestly havent checked to see of they still show up in the routers client list when they stop working. I will check next time one goes down here today.
Do your “routers” allow for seamless roaming? If not this will unfortunately be normal behaviour as your wireless devices will try to stay connected to a router and not switch to the closest/fastest one.
This is why so many people use multiple access points rather than different routers.
Access Points generally support roaming and will often automatically measure the signal strength and channels around them to select which AP and which channel to use.
The 2 satellite routers are pretty old D link routers so i doubt it. The main was has a roaming assistant feature. which i enabled. but i dont know about seamless roaming as i haven’t seen anything like that in the manual or settings.
So would i be able to just swap out the satellite routers with AP’s and keep the main router. or do i need a special main router as well?
Your main router is a Asus. Asus sells “mesh” nodes that are basically the same as Access Points and you can just hook them up via Ethernet back to the router.
Ill be honest networking is not my strong point. I dont know if i have too go mesh but was recomended on another forum. Im fine with APs i just need to be able to have ny wifes laptop stay connected as she moves around the house on video chat for work. I have ip cameras and need port forwarding for remote desktop and my FREENAS access. If either can do all that and not have the wifi drop im down. My first instinct was APs as thats what i have heard most about but was told i may have the same dropping issues.
Thanks again.
Would those Asus mesh routers work with my current router then or replace it all together?
The thing about wifi roaming is that all roaming decisions are made by the client. There are weird ways APs can attempt to suggest roaming, but the client always decides.
A common problem with multiple APs on the same SSID is transmit power being too high. If a client moves from one AP to another, it may get stuck on the previous AP if it can still see transmissions from it - even if a more powerful AP is closer. However your phone may not be powerful enough to transmit back to the original AP, leading to WiFi drops.
The solution to this problem is to reduce transmit power on your APs. I’m guessing your APs will be on 19-23 dBm by default, so maybe try reducing all three to 15 dBm and see how you go. After that try 14, 13, 12, etc. Having different AP models can make this a little harder, but not too much.
For measuring the issue I’d suggest getting a phone app to measure wifi signal (there is one on Android called WiFi Analyzer by VREM that works, but do your own research). This will let you measure the received power level as you walk around your house. As you walk into coverage of one AP to another the previous AP should drop off in power, leaving the closest AP as most powerful. It will also show you which AP you’re currently associated with (identified by the BSSID, basically a MAC address), so you can monitor if your phone is roaming correctly.
Wanted to update. I bought a new ASUS router that supported their AiMesh, and the ASUS RT-AX92U-2-Pack that the user above mentioned and have had success with that combo. Thanks again for the tips everyone!
o i guess long story short, for the last year I’ve been arguing with Spectrum that our internet repeatedly goes down. Recently had a supervisor out finally and I feel confident the issue is not them and started looking more in depth with my internal network again. In short I would seemingly randomly lose internet connection both on my Wi-Fi devices and ethernet although the Wi-Fi seemed to be more severely affected.
I had an ASUS RT-AC1900P router as my main router and two RT-AX92U AiMesh nodes connected to it with an ethernet backhaul. Now the nodes are connected to the main router via a 10 port gigabit unmanaged switch not directly connected but as far as I know that shouldn’t matter. I had this setup for the past year and the problem persisted since set up.
This week after most likely ruling out my ISP as the problem in replaced my main router with an RT-AX88U router. I first just used the router without the nodes and all worked great for 12 hours so I added one of the nodes. within an hour i was back to the same problems. So I can now deduce it likely has something to do with the Aimesh system or maybe a bad node. Or perhaps I don’t have the mesh network setup correctly. I’ve included a rudimentary map of my network as well as some of the settings on my router as an aid in hopefully helping me solve this issue.
I would really like to keep a single SSID for my network as it aids in my google home nonsense. Thats the reason I moved to the mesh setup as i used to have 3 separate SSID’s with 3 different routers.
Like I said I have them connected with ethernet backhaul and have just a 2.4Ghz network active (5Ghz radio turned off on router and nodes).
Problem Solved. seems one of the ASUS AX92U mesh wifi routers was defective. replaced with with an old asus router set to Aimesh node mode. and were working fine.