TL-WA1201 multi-SSID unreliable/unusable

@Wizz 

Hi, thank you very much for your time and patience.

Here is the beta firmware to fix the unstable issue under the Muiti-SSID with VLAN tags:

https://static.tp-link.com/beta/2021/202101/20210104/TL-WA1201v2_210104.zip

please feel free to update here whether the beta firmware could fix your current issue or not;

Thanks a lot and wait for your reply.

@TP-Link Thank you. This does actually appear to improve the situation. If you or engineers need logs or further info from me, please let me know.

In the meantime, can I suggest that you make your chat agents and engineers aware. I spent over an hour on chat the other day and the agent was unaware of the issue, I insisted that she check with management and she said she'd check with an engineer who advised that a fix was being worked on but nothing available and no fix date. When I found a link to the beta you just sent me, the engineer apparently told the chat agent that it was for a different issue. I asked what other devices could be offered as a substitute and was told  that this is the only product you currently make for multi-SSID. When I asked how I could contact management, the agent cut me off

@TP-Link Hi

After having the same issue, and applying the firmware, it improved for approx a month, but we're back to the unit hanging frequently; unable to connect to the SSID's, and unable to log in to the device via the static IP for management.

I've even tried to set a nightly reboot schedule, but that's now not happening either.

D

@Diceuk Thank  you for your update, we would like to follow up your case via email and escalate it to our seniors, please check your inbox soon, thank you. 

@Solla-topee 

I came across this post yesterday as was having the same issue where using a different VLAN ID against an SSID would result in timeouts and packet drops.

The setup I'm using is a pfSense CE firewall connected to a TL-SG108E switch that is then connected to the TL-WA1201 Access Point. VLAN 1 is being used as default LAN traffic

VLAN 208 is my 'guest' network. I have 2 SSID's configured, the first using VLAN 1 and the second using VLAN 208.

When I looked at port statistics on the switch I could see there was a large volume of packets marked as "bad" on port1 (connected to pfSense) and more so on port 8 (connected to AP).

I updated to the beta firmware as on this post and that did resolve the visible issue as devices were now able to access sites without notable slowness or timeouts. I did however not that packets on the switch are still being marked as bad, in the interest of narrowing the cause I went through the below:

Initial steps to diagnose the cause was to disable the SSID using VLAN 208 on both 2.4 and 5ghz frequency. The bad packet count stopped increasing on both ports.

Next I turned the SSID on but set the VLAN back to 1. 1 bad packet initially but nothing else and over an hour there was no increase during device use.

I then set the VLAN back to 208 on this SSID but tested the 2.4 and 5ghz separately to see if it was one or the other. Both had the same issue and with seconds of connecting a device the bad packet counts would quickly increase.

Port stats were reset a few minutes ago but for example:

For now will stay on the beta firmware as its much more usable but still not 100% right it seems. Interested to see if anyone is seeing the same behavior on the beta release.

Cheers,
SuudoXR

@SuudoXR I believe the reporting of bad packets is a problem with the TL-SG108E stats algorithm rather than being an actual issue. See post #16 on this thread https://community.tp-link.com/en/business/forum/topic/83046?page=2

Hi Wizz, I was assured by tp-link tech support that the TL-WA1201definitely does multi-SSID, multi-VLAN with no problems.

I spent 10's of hours on this. Configure, factory resets, re-configure, reboot all attached kit, check the rest of the network, test all the VLAN's everywhere, change switches out, move the TL-WA1201 from switch to switch to router. nslookup from every WiFi access point and every port on every switch.

I did something even worse... I dumped the TL-WA1201 and bought an EAP225. I just assumed it was a typical tp-link gotcha! (Yeah, I've been using tp-link stuff far too long with way too many problems).

Now I find that it's a *BUG* in the firmware? I'm sick.

Come on tp-link. You need to get much better than this. You've wasted days of my life because of poor hardware and firmware testing and badly educated support staff. @TP-Link 

Same @davidraw ! Disappointing, but then what do you expect from any customer service these days? I started this thread because TP-Link were not answering other threads on the same topic and I assume you saw my post #3 above. Having contacted customer services in a number of ways, no one knew anything about anything. They told me that TL-WA1201 was the only AP they made which supported multi-SSID (even tho they *do* have others). When I found this beta firmware in another post somewhere, I asked them about that and they assured me that it was not a solution for this issue (even tho it obviously *is*).

Obviously TP-Link is generally cheaper than other options, so some compromise is to be expected, but you would normally expect basic/advertised functions to work. @TP-Link How about at least publishing known bugs against firmware. This would save everyone a lot of time, frustration and money (including you and your agents)...

How did you get on with the EAP225, by the way? I am considering buying some of those for a client...

 @davidraw @Wizz  Hello, 

Sorry to hear about your unhappy experience with the customer service before, we will forward your feedback to local department for investigation.

Your feedback will help improve our service, thank you~

@Wizz As far as I know this beta firmware is still under test. The official firmware will be updated after it passes the final test. 

Please kindly keep an eye on our official website. 

@SuudoXR Hello, 

Thank you for your detailed post, as your case is quite special, we'd like to follow up your case via email and escalate it, please check our test email beginning with forum id ' 250916 ', thank you.