Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 17:38 Post subject: Repeater/Client Bridge and Wifi Roaming
hello there,
i have an R6300V2 on build 31520M set up as a repeater bridge on 5Ghz radio and an AP on 2.4Ghz radio.
i was on a skype call yesterday while connected to the repeater bridge and call dropped, i checked status page of the router to find the bridge connection uptime to the main router (the 5Ghz bridge connection) is 30 seconds, while the clients connected to the 2.4Ghz radio show normal uptime,
which means the bridge connection has been dropped/reset, loosing internet connectivity.
signal level on WL1 to main router is -69dbm and signal quality is 62%. main router has not been rebooted, and other clients connected to WL1 of main router are having no drops.
has any body faced this?
repeater bridge is configured as per wiki, erase nvram and manual config again just to be sure last night.
i attached a recent screenshot, showing WL1 uptime 51 mins and other clients on WL0 are having uptime of more than 4 hours
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Last edited by nolimitz on Mon Jul 24, 2017 18:25; edited 1 time in total
I do not have any issues on my R6400 bridged to EA6900 both runing 31520. I do use 40MHz channel width, no beam forming and no airtime fairness, basically defaul config, with AC/N mixed and WPA2/AES security
thanks for the reply, at least i know the build is fine and the R6400 is almost identical to the R6300V2.
the only difference in your configuration is the 40Mhz channel width (i had mine set to 80Mhz), which i just tried and made no difference.
i noticed while looking at the wireless clients page in the router status that once some mobile devices connect to WL0, WL1 is reset. however not every time the clients connect, reset is happening (devices are iPhones). i am suspecting roaming related issue and i decreased the beacon interval from 100ms to 50ms on the client bridge. monitoring to see if it will make a difference.
I think i came to a conclusion that the 5Ghz radio of this router is having a problem, could be another hardware problem as well.
Set it as an AP now on 2.4Ghz and looks fine, no drops.
I tried another R6300v2, with same results. Cannot be hardware issue.
When mobile clients join 2.4ghz AP, resets happen on 5ghz ( client brodge interface). Its annoying as people keep moving with their phones between the two coverage zones :
Zone 1: first floor AP
Zone 2: ground floor client bridge 5ghz + 2.4ghz AP
further updates to this issue for future reference.
i took an old retired E3000 running Kong build 22000, and did same configuration, client bridge on 5ghz, AP on 2.4Ghz. wireless drops still happen but are less frequent.
then i thought, let me try a newer build, i flashed BS k3x 31690, same results, drop outs still happen.
next i tried a very old build, build 14929 and guess what, 5ghz client bridge is not dropping, uptime monitoring is checked from main AP as build 14929 does not show wireless uptime on E3000.
is this a broadcom driver issue? was the driver changed in between? or a related change happened between build 14929 and build 22000?
also, it seems that even on newer builds were E3000 is dropping out client bridge connection, it happens less than in R6300v2, so it seems ARM routers are affected more than MIPS routers.
So the issue for sure is about mobile clients moving from one zone to another, leaving AP and associating with repeater bridge. Are there specific advanced tweaks for this?
I solved it the following way and it works fine now on both E3000 (build 31690) and R6300v2 (build 31870M) but as expected, throughput is not that good for LAN transfers, but good enough for internet (26-30 mbps if R6300v2 is used, 20mbps if E3000 is used):
- ISP ONT--Lan Cable--AP1 (SSID: "bridge" 20mhz N-Only 2.4Ghz, only for repeater use, not for wifi clients)
- Repeater Bridge wirelssly connected to AP1 (wl0 SSID: "bridge" , wl0.1 SSID: "SSID1", wl1 disabled)
- ISP ONT--Lan Cable--AP2 (SSID: "SSID1" , to ensure roaming)
Would love to see some inputs from others on wifi roaming between an AP and Repeater Bridge and possible fixes, otherwise i will replace AP1 with a 5Ghz capable router. The other easy fix is to use separate SSIDs for each floor, it will work but its so annoying that i want to avoid.
