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Forum Discussion
RBR840 and Satallites
I cannot find anything reliable on Mr. Google, but long and short of it - I have two devices that keep roaming to my router, when a satellite is literally 5 feet away. And, what's worse - they keep ...
DDTriGuy wrote:
I have two devices that keep roaming to my router, when a satellite is literally 5 feet away
Just to clarify: these two devices are originally connected to a satellite, and then change connections to the router? (roam)
They have been connected to the Satellite when I rebooted the router (was hoping they'd stay)... So, yes, it does appear they roam over to the router. It's just weird that these two devices constantly have connectivity issues (so I have zero idea how it thinks the router is a better choice).
I did an experiment a year ago with my old RBR50 system. Set up Wireshark in monitor mode to capture the management frames from the Orbi router and satellites. What I found at the time was that when the router and satellites were rebooted, the router began broadcasting Beacon Frames considerably before the satellites did. (as much as a minute). I have intended to repeat the experiment to gain more precision in the numbers, but it is "not at the top of my list" right now.
One consequence of this could be that when the entire system is rebooted, the WiFi signal disappears from all access points (router and satellites). Thus every WiFi device in the house goes into "search mode" in order to regain their network connections. Beacon frames are broadcast between 5-10 times each second. If those IoT devices "see" a WiFi signal that they recognize, they may latch onto the router and stop looking.
It was really fascinating to watch the device in my house probing and associating with the various access points. (at the time I had one router and two satellites.)
An easy experiment would be to power cycle those IoT devices and see what they do.
So, what is a user to do?
- Try to keep reboots to a minimum.
- Power the router and satellites with small UPS systems so that 'minor' power interruptions do not cause a reboot.
- If the system does reboot, make a note to self: cycle those two ignorant IoT things.
You know, you bring up a good point... we just had a power outage in the area a couple of days ago. So based on what you are saying, they may have stuck to the router when power came back. The other things that are staying on the Satellite are OS systems (Mac, AppleTV) but the things stuck to the router are IoTs, as you predicted.
Let's see how that rolls...- Rebooted, they went back to the router!!! And have like 1 bar of signal strength. So weird.
This might be an opportunity to determine how frustrating and disruptive this problem is, and what the cost threshold is for fixing it.
Some examples:
- Maybe other IoT devices that fulfill the same function have more intelligent software and will switch to the strongest signal. At the very least it might be worth investing a few dollars in a different brand to see how they behave.
- Another tactic would be to install an inexpensive WiFi Extender which connects to the primary WiFi and creates a separate WiFi SSID just for those two idiot devices. By connecting them to that SSID, every time there is a power outage or reboot, they will connect only to the WiFi Extender. (Hmmm. an opportunity to see how :"smart" WiFi extender software is!!!) Will have to dig in my "box of stuff" and get a couple out to test.