Solid red light on Deco S4 but internet is working
Solid red light on Deco S4 but internet is working
I have set up 3 Deco S4 units yesterday. All of them are in Access Point mode and connected to the main switch via ethernet cable.
The Deco units have static IP addresses on my DHCP subnet, their gateway and DNS pointing to 0.0.0.0 (they have no access to the internet)
All of the Deco units' light are solid red, my deco app no longer recognises them as online... However, my wifi network and my internet are working fine, as quick as they should be and I have no issue with my connection. I am happy with their performance.
So, does it mean, the Deco units need to be able to reach an external address for some reason? If that is the case, why? Is there a way to make them work locally only and get my Deco app to recognise them again? If they need a constant connection to any cloud service, that is a dealbreaker for me.
Thank you
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I have few questions:
1. Does the device that is acting as the router also have an active wireless connection?
2. If so, is the SSID the same as the Deco's?
3. Does the router show the Deco in its device list?
4. Can you Ping the Deco's IP address?
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Thank you for the reply @Carl
Here are the answers:
1. Does the device that is acting as the router also have an active wireless connection?
No, the router doesn't have a wireless function. I have no other AP on the network.
2. If so, is the SSID the same as the Deco's?
3. Does the router show the Deco in its device list?
Yes. The Deco units are shown in the DHCP leases (set as static on the router). Sometimes offline, sometimes online. It looks random. But this status doesn't seems to affect them. When I started typing, 2 out of the 3 appeared online and 1 appeared as offline. Now, all of them appear as offline in the DHCP lease list (but I still have the internet).
4. Can you Ping the Deco's IP address?
Yes, I can ping all 3 units and they all respond to the ping.
A bit more info about my setup:
I have a BT modem and a pfSense 2.4.5 router. This router is connected to a Netgear GS716T switch. I have the 3 deco unit connected to this same switch one by one via ethernet cables. The switch has the factory settings, no VPN set up on it.
Thank you.
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Thank you. I will speak with my local QA team and go over your answers with them. I'll get back to you shortly.
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@Carl Hi! I have the same issue, but with a Mikrotik router. The Deco is configured like AP and have and all are with red lights but the internet service works fine. The Deco app only works if its cinnected to the wireless network, dont work remotely. Sounds like a port fowarding issue on the router but i have upnp enabled.
Thanks!
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We are currently checking with our engineering team. What it could be in both cases is a the router's firewall is blocking the self-check ping. Can you let me know if your MikroTek has an active firewall?
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@Carl The router has a firewall enable, if can send to me the ports that the Deco use i can create a rule to test.
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That can be the case, indeed, but I am not sure how that can be solved without letting the Deco units out to the internet.
But my main issue is the app. My units are connected to the same network as my phone, in fact, the Deco units are the ones who created the wifi network where my phone is connected. But the app is saying that all my units are offline and can not be found.
Fo me, it looks like the Deco units are (trying to) checking into a (cloud) account with their status and some details, and the Deco app is monitoring that account to see the status of the Deco units, instead of finding them on the local network and read the status directly. I am just speculating here but that would explain the issue with the app.
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That's not too far from the reality of it actually. The Deco system does a periodic DNS querey to test the internet connection. If the system recieves a response you see a green light. If it does not you see a red light. The red light doesn't actually mean there is no internet, just that something is wrong. In this case that could be that the DNS query is being blocked. I will not that this DNS querey does not establish a connection to any site or internet service, it simply is used to test the connection to the internet.
Also another thing to test and to ensure the system is operating normally is to put your phone on LTE/5G and try to log into the Deco's UI from the Deco app. As the Deco is a system based in cloud technology and remote mangement, the reason you need a TP-Link ID to log in, then if you are able to manage on LTE/5G the Deco would be working correctly as you need cloud and internet in order access from a remote network.
Do you know if this cloud access is working and also do you know if your router is blocking this type of DNS querey?
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Thanks for the update. Yes, that can be the issue in my case. The Deco units are blocked to reach the internet, so they won't be able to check-in anywhere, DNS queries will fail. So this can be the answer to why the LED is red.
However, my main concern is the Deco app. Is it possible to set the app to look for the Decos on my local network instead of checking them on my cloud account? After all, my Deco app is aware of the Deco units, those units are the ones that created the WiFi network my phone is connected to.
Thanks.
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