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Forum Discussion
Trial Firmware: WAX214 connectivity issues with iOS 14.x devices
Greetings Business Wireless customers,
Some owners of WAX214 have experienced connection issues with iOS 14.x devices. We have a new trial firmware that we would like to confirm if it improves ...
Alright, continuing from last night. Added in a Netgear 12V 1.5A power brick. No change, system still crashes (upon bootup, it bootloop cycles seeminly indefinitely).
WPA is Mixed (2 and 3).
2.4GHz and 5GHz are set to 20MHz bandwidth
ax mode enabled on 2.4GHz
Lots of other WiFi APs in the area - I can see ~80 between the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios.
Just for fun, since the question was about iOS devices, I turned off my laptop's wifi for the next attemp. Now, with just the two iOS devices, tthe AP actually starts up and works. 2.4G LED is not lit up on the device (2.4G is enabled, though).
When I added the laptop ~10min after bootup, the wifi network didn't crash. It has mantained this newfound stability even after several hours and a break inbetween.
Now to test:
If the presence of the Intel AX210 laptop during AP startup will cause the bootloop.
If so, how long after the AP is booted, will I need to wait before it doesn't instantly bootloop?
And of course, if this stability is present without the 12V 1.5A power brick, since without PoE, this AP is useless for my use.
Huh. It's working now with:
starting up with the AX210 laptop searching for a network
PoE
both iOS devices connected.
WPA mixed.
Dunno why it's working now and not earlier. Also, now I remember, I disabled the 2.4GHz radio the last time I used this access point (about a month ago), in an attempt to figure out if there were any ways to mitigate the reboot/bootlooping problem.
Maybe the updated firmware needed a few reboots to really flush out the gunk?
and it crashed again, into another bootloop.
Maybe try with the security mode set to WPA2 only? I would be interested to see if that resolves the boot looping. I have found that the WPA2/WPA3 hybrid mode will not crash your setup right away. I think it has to hit the Group Key Update Interval timeout before crashing. My setup is similar to yours except that I don't have any AX clients. I think all of mine are AC at the highest. I have not tried this beta firmware yet.
Thanks JBox , I did not think about that. Looks like the interval is dafaulted to 3600 (seconds?) If so, that is 60min. Dunno when does it start counting. I know my iPad Air 2 cannot use WPA3, since it failed to connect when I had it in WPA3-only mode, and Apple says so here (Protocol security - Apple Support).
Now it did also crash in WPA3-only mode, so I wonder if WPA2-only will result in stability. That being said, if it's WPA2-only, that's about 1/2 of the WiFI6 upgrade rationale broken (other 1/2 being hard to prove improvements in RF performance).
Definitely a bit tempted to both reduce the interval and see if Wireshark can capture anything, though I already have work + hobbies, and I'd rather not have to combine both to fix a paid product.
EDIT: Also, since this is almost the 3rd month of this device not working (I bought it from Netgear the moment it was offered, and it arrived in early February). I am tempted to just give up on it.
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