Keep losing wifi settings on various pieces of kit - whats the cause?

[Arcam_boy]

Hello.

I'm not the most technical when it comes to all this stuff so hoping for a little help.

As things stand we have sky internet (60mb) but in 2 weeks time will be getting FTTP BT 900mb as we have now had this service installed in the area.

My router is a TP Link VR2800 and I've added TP Link Deco M5 mesh (3 modules) to improve coverage in the house.

Over the last few months some of the kit over wifi just loses its wifi settings and has to be reset / reconnected etc and its now being very very annoying.

The products that drop out....

Sky / Sky Q boxes pretty much every day

Nest thermostats / protects - weekly

Sonos - weekly/fortnightly

Recently my printer connected via wifi has totally gone off line and a BG wifi plug socket has lost all its settings too!

I have to keep resetting the router or the item and linking it back up - I had most of it on the 2.4Ghz setting and have now changed to the Mesh network but still getting random drop outs of my kit.

I don't have any issues with stuff connected via ethernet and with the mesh network have pretty good wifi coverage throughout the house. My laptop/phone on the house wifi doesn't seem to have any issues at all just mainly the above items so it really is a bit of a mystery. They can work for several days/weeks then just drop off the wifi and need a full reset of the wifi settings and reboot of the router!!

Any help / suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[Bolosun]

Contact TP Link's support. I have in the past and they are very good. I think your Router is faulty.

 

[mickevh]

What do you mean by "loosing their settings?"

If Wi-Fi devices loose connection, you should not need to "reset" anything to resolve it, you just need to poke them into re-acquiring the network (which they should do automatically.) Though for some things, they may need a reboot to do so. (My laptop likes to loose connection and I have to sleep/resume or something similar to power cycle the Wi-Fi NIC, to poke back into life, but I never have to "reset" anything."

That said, the symptoms you describe sound a lot like an interference issue - possibly a new interference source has appeared nearby, but it's really hard to identify this without specialist equipment. You could try using a (free) Wi-Fi scanner like InSSIDer or Acrylic Wi-Fi (and I don't doubt numerous similar clones,) however be aware they only display Wi-Fi AP's and not the client devices or any non-Wi-Fi sources.

If you have not already done so, I would be inclined to devise your own radio channel plan and "fix" it (rather than let anything "auto-tune") to preclude the possibility that VR are Deco's are dancing around each other. (Some client device do not react very well when an AP they are using re-tunes.)

 

[Kristian]

As Mick asks, is it wifi dropping out or the actual kit really losing config?

Any firmware/software updates for your router/APs?

 

[Arcam_boy]

Thanks for the replies...

It seems to be the actual kit...

Sky....I had to reactivate the internet connection on the main box and Q boxes by entering the password again and selecting a network.

All my Sonos kit has gone off line again for about the 10th time this usually takes about an hour to get it all back online so I haven't bothered doing it for a while

Nest - Camera is pretty stable - we have 3 thermostats and they sporadically lose connection - we have 4 nest protects and again they lose connection and don't reconnect/sync

I've recently lost the wifi on my wireless printer which had been ok for 18 months

I've also lost the wifi on my BG wifi socket - this has gone off twice but won't connect at all at the moment.

As I say my laptop/phone/ipad always works fine. The wired stuff is all pretty stable.

I'll have a look at a wifi scanner as never tried one. Thanks

 

[eddyx11]

Go in the "Advanced" settings on your Deco app. Ensure that "Fast Roaming" isn't enabled.

 

[Bolosun]

I had the VR900 and that was doing the same thing, disappearing off the network, both wi-fi and ethernet. Switching it off and leaving it a few minutes would fetch it back. It got gradually worse and I would reinstall my Sky router and after a few days try the 900 and all would be well for a month or so, until it eventually failed completely. I used TP-Link's support and they sent me a 2800 as replacement.

 

[Arcam_boy]

Go in the "Advanced" settings on your Deco app. Ensure that "Fast Roaming" isn't enabled.

Fast roaming was off.

Should I have it set as router or access point under operation mode?

Thanks for your help

 

[eddyx11]

When you get FTTP, I'd remove the VR2800 and just use the M5 system in router mode. One M5 will connect by ethernet cable to your ONT. You can connect the other port to a switch to serve a wired network or to daisy chain your M5's, for ethernet backhaul.

When using the VR2800 as your router. You want the M5 system in Access Point mode, or you'll get double NAT troubles not to mention, potential, DHCP conflicts.

 

[mickevh]

When you get FTTP, I'd remove the VR2800 and just use the M5 system in router mode. One M5 will connect by ethernet cable to your ONT. You can connect the other port to a switch to serve a wired network or to daisy chain your M5's, for ethernet backhaul.

That's an interesting idea. To save me go surfing for a datasheet, do you happen to know whether M5 has the "grunt" handle 900mbps (ish) WAN-to-LAN routing capacity..?

 

[eddyx11]

Ha! No, not to a single client, they are only Wifi 5. Still, it saves one greedy piggy from hogging all the bandwidth.

 

[mickevh]

The WAN-To-LAN routing capacity is distinct from the Wi-Fi (and ethernet) link rates. It describes how fast the device (router) terminating the incoming ISP like can shift IP packets between the ISP and the local network - point being that it is cumulative for all the local clients, not any particular one. Essentially it's about how powerful the CPU is in the routing device and to a lesser extent how much RAM it has (for things like NAT traversal tables, firewall processing and so on.)

If one procures an Internet service from an ISP that supply "their" router, it's almost certain that the ISP will supply a router with sufficient WAN-To-LAN capacity for the service we've bought. However, it's something one needs to be aware of if using/buying something "after market," especially as ISP rates are getting higher and higher.

To cite a ludicrous and made up example, if I've bought a 800mbps ISP service, then hang a router on the end of it that can "only" route 100mbps, I'm obviously not going to be able to use all the bandwidth I've paid for, no matter how fast the local Wi-Fi/ethernet links are.

Tim at SmallNetBuilder usually cites WAN-To-LAN capacity in his tests and some (though by no means all) equipment vendors cite it in the datasheets/specifications.

 

[eddyx11]

Get you, well after testing it in router only mode. I could only manage about 750 Mb/s with wired clients and up to about 450 Mb/s on wifi.

So, I revise my advice to the OP. If you've got internet higher than 500 Mb/s or so, I'd only use them in Access Mode. They work really well for me like that with the BT Smart Hub 2. Even more so if you can provide an ethernet backhaul.

 

[Arcam_boy]

I've turned the 5ghz mode off on my router and changed the M5 mesh things to access mode and as things stand everything is working nicely....

No doubt after typing this I'll wake up in the morning and lost half my stuff