@Antimus 
 

Frequent PHY Errors on TP-Link BE65 – Possible Fixes

I’ve seen many PHY errors on my brand-new Deco BE65, and I assume these errors are not limited to my unit. PHY errors usually indicate packet loss or frame retransmissions at the Wi-Fi physical layer, which can cause short disconnects—especially noticeable with devices like Google Nest cameras and doorbells.

While investigating, I tried several adjustments that reduced the errors and stabilized my devices. You can try the same:

1. Adjust Mesh & Roaming Features

• Disable Fast Roaming (802.11r) – Nest and many IoT devices don’t handle aggressive roaming well.

• Turn off Band Steering temporarily – forces devices to stay on one band and prevents re-authentication drops.

• Disable Mesh Technology for affected devices – in the Deco app, this keeps them on a single node.

2. Optimize Security & IP Handling

• Use WPA2-PSK only (no WPA3 or mixed mode).

• Assign reserved IP addresses for Nest devices to avoid DHCP rebind drops.

• Avoid using the IoT network for testing—some multicast packets may be filtered there.

3. Reduce PHY Layer Interference

• Set fixed 2.4 GHz channel (1, 6, or 11) with 20 MHz width.

• Space Deco nodes at least 5–7 meters apart to minimize co-channel interference.

• If possible, position IoT devices closer to their serving node.

4. Keep Firmware Updated

• Ensure the BE65 is on the latest firmware, as TP-Link has been addressing PHY-related stability issues.

• Reboot all nodes after making changes to clear old associations.

My results:

After applying these settings, PHY errors dropped noticeably, and the random disconnects (especially with Nest devices) almost disappeared.

  @rainer_udo 

Thanks, there only seem to be so many of these that I can do.

Fast roaming was off already, I usually turn that off on mesh systems as the benefits never outweigh the problems

I can't find band steering

Mesh is off for both cameras.

I've tried WPA2 and mixed, will set back to WPA2

I've now added reserved IP

I've tried IoT and non, same problem on both, should I just not use the IoT network at all then?

I can't see where to choose the channel, it seems the only option is to let it automatically set that, which is annoying, unless it's buried in the settings somewhere

2 nodes are fairly close to each other but I have limited options with the house layout and where I need to have ethernet. My only other option would be to start wiring up ethernet which I have thought about to use cable backhaul instead of wifi.

Also updated to that beta firmware.

Let's see how it goes.

Hi  @Antimus 

I would be interested to hear a response from the TP-Link team on this also

I too came from a Velop mesh and upgraded to the XE75 platform to alleviate the network dropouts i was seeing.

Specifically when i installed the XE75's, i had issues with both my Harmony Hub and Phillips Hue bridge completely breaking and my Google Nest Thermometer experiencing >50% packet loss.

All of these devices are IoT and I suspect are very talkative over multicast, and i think the problem might lie in how the Decos manage this type of traffic

Out of interest are you on Router or AP mode? All of these issues disappeared when i moved back to AP mode, althought this is not my ideal setup and has caused me other issues,

Just a point to note that i have discovered. The IoT network option is purely creating a seperate SSID for these devices and does not mean any network level segmentation/isolation on the LAN itself.

Regards

G