EAP783 connectivity problems over time on 2.4 Ghz band
It seems that as time passes by, something goes wrong with the EAP783 and devices on the 2.4 Ghz band start having problems connecting or maintaning a good wireless connection.
I have 3 separate ESSIDs, main, guests and Internet of Things (IoT). I run 2.4 Ghz exclusively on the IoT ESSID and both 5/6G bands run in the main and guest ESSIDs.
I have not yet determined the specific amount of time, but I think in my particular situation, it is about two weeks or more, when my devices start experiencing problems.
Two devices that I have noticed start disconnecting or can no longer reliably maintain a connection are:
Pool controller -> iAqualink 2.0 iq20 model
Blink Outdoor Floodlight camera -> Only this camera out of a total of 9 of them around the house presented the issue.
Last weekend I was trying to remotely manage my pool to turn the spa on and I just could not connect to the controller at all. I reset the controller multiple times, it would attempt to join the network, sometimes stay connected for a small amount of time and then just drop. I tried pinging it and it would just pretty much have lots of dropped pings. Regardless of anything I tried on the iAqualink device, it just did not work until I decided to reboot the EAP783. At this point, the AP had been up without a reboot for 28+ days.
About a week or so before I rebooted the AP, I had also been fighting with the Blink Floodlight Camera. That one is a bit easier to "power cycle" since I can use a switch to cut the power to it from the light switch which was initially set for just an outdoor floodlight. With the Blink camera, I would power cycle it, it would come back up, work for several hours, even a day and the camera would just go offline as well. Upon rebooting the EAP783, the camera has been connected 100% of the time. As of now, the AP has been up for 4 days 15 hours.
I found an article in the forums where someone with a collection of WiFi6 access points seems to be experiencing the exact same problems. His problem seemed worse as his devices would drop after a day.
Does anyone know how to fix this problem? Does TP-Link need to revise the firmware on the devices and implement a fix? I was a UniFi user for many years and never had this kind of problems. I would never have to reboot the access points to get them to work. The first things that support told me to do was to set a reboot of the AP. That is not the right solution. Networking equipment should never have to be rebooted on a recurring basis to operate correctly.
I will keep monitoring my recently rebooted device and will udpate this post when I notice wireless clients start to drop again from the WiFi.
The firmware is inded 1.0.10 (original had a typo).
So far the issue was only seen on those two devices and power cycling them, forgetting the network and adding them back did not solve the problem. The problem was fully resolve by power cycling the EAP783 access point. As of now, the AP has been up for 6 days and 3 hours.
I ran the WLAN optimization but it said it failed. I am running it for a 3rd time now. From the image above, you can see I am using WPA2-PSK / AES and PMF is disabled (that was the default because I do not remember having to disable it).
This screen says it succeeded:
But if I look into the details it says it failed.
Let me know if you need more info.
The WiFi devices work perfectly fine for about two weeks then on week 3+ I start seeing the problems. At the moment, both the Camera and the iAqualink both work perfectly fine in their location, but we are on 8 day 14 hours uptime for the EAP 783. Within the next two weeks I expect to start seeing problems again. I will update the moment I first notice one of the devices starting to drop from the network.
I cannot relocate the devices permanently. One is a floodlight camera at the front of the house, the other is the pool WiFi controller which is hard wired to the main pool board outside the house. The floodlight camera does show full WiFi signal strength on the blink app. The iAqualink shows 2 bars out of the max when I reset it and attach it to the wireless network.
I do not have an easy way to find the MAC address of the camera, so this is from the Blink app
This is the current signal strength as seen from the AP for the iAqualink device:
