Hi, @evoon 

Where is the Wireshark client plugged in when no client connecting to the EAP? Is it a wired client plugged into the router or a wireless client?

Currently, wifi sniffer is only able to sniff packets on a specific channel. That is to say, if the wireshark client is connecting to router's wifi (channel1), it won't sniff packets sent to EAP's wifi(channel6). For more details, you can check How to Capture the Wireless Packets on MacBook

You can mirror the downlink port of the router and capture the packets to see if the broadcast packets are sent to the EAP or not.

Or you can plug a wired client on the ETH port of the EAP and capture packets.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that the Wireshark PC is in monitor mode. So, it listens to packets in the air (not connected either by RJ45 cable or Wi-Fi connection). At no time is it a client. When I can't see the broadcast packet in the air, is when there is really only one wireless client, which is the broadcasting client. Although there is always one wired client—my laptop connected via RJ45 to the router with the Omada controller up. The Wireshark PC is not the same as the laptop with Omada .

On the monitoring device, I can only see the packet in the air retransmitted by one specific AP when another client, different from the broadcasting one, is connected to this specific AP by a wireless connection. I can dynamically switch channels while scanning in Wireshark, so it is not a channel misunderstanding. The PC connected to the router with Omada can see the broadcast packets coming through its Ethernet port.

The conclusion of my testing is that if there are no other wireless clients, the packet is not retransmitted in the air. If there is another client, connected with a wire, the packet is retransmitted through the wire, and not in the air. Thanks for your help.

 Hi @evoon 

By not retransmitting the broadcast packets when there is no client connected, the AP is effectively reducing unnecessary network traffic. This can help in optimizing the network performance by avoiding unnecessary data transmissions.

May we know your network scenario and why you want this?

  @Vincent-TP 

Network scenario:
1 UDP broadcast emitter, connected to the open Wi-Fi and not moving.
Multiple APs as well, all on the same open Wi-Fi network.

The emitter sends UDP broadcasts multiple times per second. These broadcast packets need to be retransmitted by all APs to ensure full broadcast coverage of a zone.

Multiple receivers are spread around the APs but are not connected in any way to the Wi-Fi. The objective for the receivers is to listen to the broadcast packets from the emitter without being connected, by "sniffing"/"monitoring" the traffic on certain channels.

I currently have it 100% working with a useless device connected to each AP to force each AP to retransmit the broadcast packets.

Why don't I simply connect the receivers to the Wi-Fi network? Because the receivers will be moving between the APs, and the 802.11r roaming tests I have conducted were not 100% consistent. Not having to reconnect when moving between APs is gold.

So my question is: Is it possible to disable this energy-saving/optimizing feature?

I don't know if this is relevant, but I think WoW or WoL magic packets are sent to offline devices. So, in some cases, packets are retransmitted without a connected client. I am also wondering if I could disguise my packets like that to have them retransmitted.

Thanks for your time.

 Hi, @evoon 

Thank you so much for taking the time to post the issue on TP-Link community! To better assist you, I've created a support ticket via your registered email address and escalated it to our support engineer to look into the issue. The ticket ID is TKID240705452, please check your email box and ensure the support email is well received. Thanks! Once the issue is addressed or resolved, welcome to update this topic thread with your solution to help others who may encounter the same issue as you did. Many thanks for your great cooperation and patience!

  @Vincent-TP 

Hello,

The final answer to this subject is that they are not planning to make this feature disableable.

Have a great day,
evoon