EAP245: WiFi is disrupted several times per day for a few minutes
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We use two EAP245s in our small business to cover two floors. I chose this model to increase the network reliability, but unfortunately, we experience frequent WiFi network disruptions: every few hours, the following happens for a few minutes:
- All mobile devices lose complete network access (can't even ping the EAP245, the router, or any internet address like 8.8.8.8).
- Devices initially show a connected WiFi without connectivity but might disconnect completely eventually (probably depending on the length of the disruption).
- When a device manually disconnects and tries to connect again, it's not able to find the WiFi until the disruption is over.
- The WiFi usually comes back pretty quickly, after 1 or two minutes, and full performance is restored.
A few observations:
- We did not enable any advanced features, no Load Balancing, no Airtime Fairness. The EAPs run in plain vanilla config with a WiFi with the same SSID on 2.4 and 5 GHz.
- I'm not able to see anything out of the extraordinary in the (very minimal) system logs.
- As a "poor man's" monitoring, I've been running PingTools running on several phones, checking both EAPs, the router, and Google DNS 8.8.8.8 every minute. I can clearly see frequent outages, even in the middle of the night.
- I tried to run the two EAPs both individually (set up through the Omada mobile app), and managed by an Omada Controller (running dockerized on a Linux server). There might be differences in behavior, but the outages occur in both scenarios. So it's unlikely that the outage is caused by the Omada Controller "provisioning" the EAP, as I've read in other discussions.
- This happens to both our EAP245, but not at the same time (at least if they're not managed by the Omada Controller). If the WiFi is out on the upper floor, and I jog down to the lower floor, my phone will connect to the same SSID with full connectivity. Back up, there's no connectivity again.
- Initially, we ran both devices with PoE from our central switch panel, without any obvious issues. But to rule out power issues, I've also placed the PoE injector that comes with the EAP245 directly next to the device.
Other components we use (but I doubt there's much relevance): fiber internet connection, Ubiquity EdgeRouter Pro, about 40 devices on the network (both static and dynamic addresses).
Overall, the performance of the EAP245 is great when it works. But these outages are nothing we can live with. And I'm just not sure how to proceed, as it seems clearly an EAP issue, but that's nothing a business EAP should ever allow. And the same issue over two separately configured EAPs excludes the possibility of a single faulty device.
Any help is much appreciated. I'd hate to scrap the devices and go with a different brand, as I really like them if they work!
I now dug a bit into DFS and I'm not quite sure how choosing a DFS channel could help.
- IIUC, a DFS channel is a channel on which the Wifi will be dropped as soon as a radar signal is detected. Isn't using a DFS channel therefore more a possible source of the issue, rather than a solution?
- Also, I think DFS channels are only relevant for 5GHz Wifi. However, the Chromecast Audio lost connection as well, and it seems that it's a 2.4GHz-only device. That would indicate that the disruption is not related to DFS.
Nonetheless, I think trying to pin a specific channel might make sense for testing. For now, I randomly selected the DFS channel 120 (5600MHz), to follow your suggestion. If the issues are persistent, I'll try selecting different channels (e.g., non-DFS).
