CPE510 as Access point - Wifi crashing when connecting
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Hi all,
I have just bought and installed a CPE510 to use it as access point for my garden, where the home wifi doesn't reach properly.
It is connected and working, I have set up the wifi SSID, I have reduced the transmission power to 10dBm since the garnen isn't too big and I can see that the power on the receiver is reasonable (I have been reading of issue at short range due to saturation of the receiver, and I have followed the advices), but I am having some odd issue.
If I connect the PC, everything is fine. Fast and stable connection, no issue. But for that, I had to select MCS7 -I couldn't find any information about the compatibility of my wifi on the computer, and this one seems the highest that allows me to connect.
When I try to connect the mobile phone (Android 9, nothing fancy), the phone remains for a few second trying to connect, then it tells me that it is not able to connect to the network. At that point, it doesn't see the network any more for a couple of minutes at least. Now, what is even more odd, the other devices connected to the CPE510 get also disconnected and can't see the network for the same time. And, even if they see it, they can't connect.
So, it looks like that attempting to connect the phone is crashing the access point, for some reason that I cannot understand. Security doesn't make any difference, I get the same behaviour with both no security or WPA-PSK, WPA1 or WPA2.
My settings are
802.11a/n
20/40MHz
MCS7
Channel 100
TX power 10dBm
MAXtrem disabled
Security WPA-PSK
WPA2
Encryption auto
From the status, everything looks ok. No entry in the system log.
Another strange thing: this is my Firmware Version:
2.2.1 Build 20190417 Rel. 34231 (4555)
When I checked on the website, this is indicated as latest one:
CPE510(UN)_3.0-up-ver2-2-0-P9[20190125-rel36276]
Is it normal? Version is lower, release is higher?
Thank you for any help you can provide!
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@R1D2 Ok, I try to explain it better.
I have the laptop and the phone. They are in the same position, not moving, so there is no going out of range.
I connect the laptop to the wifi and it works fine. Very good speed, strong and stable signal.
I scan for the networks with the phone, I see the SSID, I try to connect and, after a few seconds of attempts, the phone says that it can't connect.
At that point, the phone doesn't see the network any more and also the laptop is disconnected. If the laptop still has the SSID in the network list, it still can't connect.
I have to wait a few minutes to be able to see again the network and to be able to reconnect the laptop.
I will try to set to n only and I will let you know.
I don't think it's an accidental change of the channel: it happens every time I try to connect the phone (I tried at least ten times yesterday with different configurations and it is perfectly reproducible).
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I just tried, setting the netword as N only doesn't make any difference. The wifi disappears the moment I try to connect the phone. The only thing that I have noticed is that the CPE510 still has the laptop as connected station for a couple of minutes after it has been disconnected.
I confirm that when the network reappears, it is on the same channel where it was set (100, in my case). It took about 5 minutes to become visible again.
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@gpaolo, this is really weird.
I did set up a CPE510, same settings, same firmware version:
However, rather than setting WiFi rate index »MCS7« I prefer 20 MHz channel width and »MCS15«. I also try to be specific as possible, so I set encryption to »AES« rather than to »Auto« (a client auto-selecting »TKIP« would disable 802.11n). Distance setting left at »Auto«:
Then I associated an old MacBook with the SSID, as well as a newer MacBookPro. My Neffos smartphone seems to not support outdoor channels from the U-NII-2C band (ch 100 to 140), so I tried an iPhone 6 laying around here. I can't reproduce the behavior you described. All devices associate successfully (0 bytes data transferred for MBs b/c they still have a wired network connection to access the CPE's status page):
No loss of the WiFi signal indicated by NetSpot analyzer during associations:
This doesn't mean that the observations you made with Android 9 are wrong. It might be possible (albeit very unlikely IMO) that Android 9 causes the CPE firmware to behave in a weird way, but I can't reproduce the effect with my devices.
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@R1D2 It's weird indeed, I have never experienced these kind of issue. I have just tried to apply your settings and I still have the same issue, WiFi went down as soon as I tried to connect the phone. I need to try with my older phone, although I'm not sure it can work on the 5GHz on those channels. I'll check the Surface Pro, but that's even older.
I have been searching online for any reference to CPE510 and android, but I can't find any. I would be surprised if it were a common bug related to the OS, Android 9 is still quite common.
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My old phone doesn't see the network, but my Surface connects fine.
It starts to look like it's a compatibility issue...
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gpaolo wrote
I have been searching online for any reference to CPE510 and android, but I can't find any. I would be surprised if it were a common bug related to the OS, Android 9 is still quite common.
Oh, Android has lot of bugs. It's just that not many people use CPEs as standard APs. For example, the Nexus 7 Android screwed up NFC in a way so that a properly programmed NFC tag can't trigger a connect action to an unencrypted WLAN such as a public hotspot. I reported this bug 5 or 6 years ago to the Android developers and just last week they closed the bug report (nothing done) with the message: »If the issue still exists, feel free to open a new report«. Funny though, since the Nexus isn't supported anymore since years now. I also found lots of other bugs in Android.
When I once had employees from Nokia in my Linux training course, I asked them whether they want a list of bugs I found on their cell phones, but they told me that they have no time to fix bugs being busy with development of next generation phones expected to be released every 6 to 12 months. As I learned back then, people just live with bugs.
Of course, I can't tell whether the buggy behavior is caused by the Android phone or the CPE, but at least the CPE shouldn't lose the WiFi signal even when invalid frames are being sent.
If you want, you can send a bug report to TP-Link support. Contact info is on the TP-Link U.K. website.
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@R1D2 Is there any way to report this issue to TP-Link so they can investigate if the problem in on the CPE side? As I said, I can't get any log out, but maybe they have some debugging tool that can be used.
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@gpaolo, just edited it in the post above: contact support through the channel(s) shown on the U.K. website: https://www.tp-link.com/uk/support/
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Ok, I'll do that, thanks. I will let you know if there is any progress!
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