Hi Community, 

I am facing a really weird and difficult issue with EAP 655 Omada APs. I will explain my setup first then write down the issue. 

 

Network:

Fiber DSL Input from the ISP which is getting plugged in to a SFP to Ethernet converter and goes in to my router (more details on this below). 

Router dials a PPPoE connection and establishes internet connection. A single 2.5Gbit ethernet cable goes to the TP-Link POE unmanaged switch from router. 

I have 2 EAP-655 APs in my house one in the ground floor and one on the first floor. Both are connected from the same switch and getting power and data from the same switch. 

There are no VLANs or multiple networks in the topology as of now, pretty basic setup it is as of now. 

 

Router:

AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS w/ Radeon 780M based mini-pc. Full Specifications:GMKTek Nucbox K8 Plus

 

Dual Intel i226V 2.5Gb NICs 

I have Proxmox installed on it and running OPNSense Router as a virtual machine on it. 

 

OPNSense itself is having 3GB of RAM and 2 virtual CPUs. 

 

Note: In my understanding the above details should have 0 impact on the actual issue I am facing, but I mentioned for the community members may be they might be able to give me some insights.

 

AP Configuration:

So initially I plugged the APs to my POE Switch directly and configured them through web interface thinking I just want to serve internet over wifi and so simple setup should be enough. 

 

Initial Setup:

2.4Ghz and 5Ghz shared same SSID with WPA3 encryption. Within the house all the phones are not more than 3 years old, so I was of the opinion everything should be supported and be seamless. 

 

I also enabled OFDMA thinking it should improve the performance.

 

Issues noticed with these configurations:

• Connecting to any AP will take more than 10-20 seconds.
• Occasionally it will drop the connection, and you would want to connect to it again.
• No roaming, if I move from ground floor to first floor it will not be seamless. Either it will remain connected to the ground floor AP or if switch to the first floor, again getting IP will take a long time and internet browsing will drop.
• No negotiation of 2.4ghz and 5ghz by the clients.
• Various devices will be pushed to a ground floor AP, despite being near to the first floor AP.
• Internet browsing will be slow, initial website resolution will take a lot of time.

 

The same internet connection was tested with another AP (non TP Link) as well as through lan, and nothing of this sort is observed.

 

Setup # 2:

Then I was told by one of my friend that you should manage these APs using Omada Software controller at least, then they will perform it in the best way, it will optimize them to the best configurations. Also change the encryption from WPA3 to WPA2/PSK.

 

Then I installed the Omada Software Controller on a container. And assigned these APs to a site. I ran all the WLand optimizations etc and then tested.

 

Results:

Same as above.

 

Setup # 3:

Then I decided to segregate 2.4ghz and 5ghz SSIDs thinking may be this is causing the issue. Also applied Load Balancing options like RSSI Threshold etc.

 

Results:

Same as above.

 

During all these setups I constantly retested and faced 0 issues when connected through LAN or the other AP. Because I thought may be the router is the issue, but there are around 5-10 different things running over lan and none are facing this issue, only the wireless devices connected to any of the APs performed poorly.

 

Now I am reaching a tipping point and poised to replace them to any other vendor. Posting here to see if someone can identify and tell me what issue I might be having with my setup. I really want to retain the APs due to their flush wall installation ease. Let me know if any more details are needed.

 

Thanks.