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WAC510 5GHz connectivity issues

Geva
Tutor

WAC510 5GHz connectivity issues

Recently I noticed a very odd issue when using two WAC510 accesspoints at one location.

 

2 LG smartphones seem to have issues when connected to the 5GHz band. The wireless link is fine and strong (-42dBm). However, the devices always indicate they have issues connecting to the internet. I ruled out firewall/switch configuration. What also has drawn my attention that if I set up the wireless network to 2.4GHz only, the issues disappear.

 

So I was playing back and forth with some settings. I also noticed that when connected over 5GHz band, I don't have internet connection, even though TCP/IP settings are correct. I can't ping the gateway on those clients. If i perform a network scan, I don't see all the devices in the network and pinging some of the known devices and some of the detected devices, doesn't work. 

 

Again, when I set up the SSID to use 2.4GHz only, I can scan the network without issues, I  see all devices, and when I ping network devices that didn't work when connected in 5GHz mode, are discovered and responds fine to ping requests.

 

It took me a while before I could isolate the issue, since the wireless networks were set up to use both 2.4 and 5GHz bands, and in the beginning I though it was triggered when using band steering and RRM function. But now that I have been using one band only, without previous mentioned options, I was able to find the issue.

 

I don't know if this is an internal bridging issue (going from LAN to 5GHz issue, while LAN to 2.4GHz performs fine), or a driver/protocol/handshake issue. 

 

Devices that I notice the issues on :

 

 - LG G5 (LG-H850), software version V20k-EUR-xx (most current) (intermittend issues, sometimes it works)

 - LG G6 (LG-H870), software version V10t-EUR-xx (most current) (this one never works on 5GHz band on these WAC510's)

 

I tried following WAC510 firmware versions;

 

 - 1.5.3.6

 - 1.5.3.7

 - 1.5.3.10

 

I don't know if it's safe to downgrade to even older firmware versions, (1.2.xx branch) so I didn't test this. Main issue is, it had seemed to be working before, but it took me several months to pinpoint this issue and I can't always reconfigure / flash the accesspoints (takes a lot of time and then all wireless networks are down).

 

I have deployed a lot of these WAC510's at business customers, I hope they don't exhibit the same issues, but maybe the customers didn't report it back to us yet. I will try to test this issue with these devices on a next intervention at their location.

 

I hope you can solve this ?

 

 

Model: WAC510|Insight Managed Smart Cloud Wireless Access Point
Message 1 of 9

Accepted Solutions
Geva
Tutor

Re: WAC510 5GHz connectivity issues

Sorry, for the past days there were several break and entry (with theft) problems in our house and neighbourhood. This is at the moment our first concern. We didn't have time to investigate a lot during those days.

 

Apparently the issue has several causes. The android devices are running Android 7.x. WAC510's are running the latest firmware. Apparently I had a lot of connects/disconnects at a certain moment, but on one side, Android didn't seem to connect anymore to the internet. Wifi connection was ok, but Android decided that the TCP/IP layer wasn't ok. Apparently is does some scans then, which my business router/firewall didn't like that and its IPS kicked in and blocked the Android devices. Since Android couldn't make a connection at all to the Internet anymore when it got blocked, it disables the wireless connection, and tries again in a few minutes, thus is looks like the wireless connection is failing, while in reality Android lacks in disaplying real notifications : the Wifi didn't fail, the TCP/IP layer failed, since the firewall blocked access. Very frustrating.

 

Since I found out about that and reflashed the WAC510's to it's latest firmware and fine tuned the Intrusion Prevention Service settings in the firewall, I didn't have any issues anymore.

 

So in case someone experiences the same issues : please check your router/firewall logs as well if it's advanced enough to have IPS. Your android device might try to scan your internet connection (TCP/IP layer) and scan your local network through Wifi and might get blocked this way, but it really looks like intermittent Wifi issues.

 

Sorry to have wasted your time, but learn from this one oversight of mine (not checking IPS logs).

 

 

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Message 7 of 9

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RaghuHR
NETGEAR Expert

Re: WAC510 5GHz connectivity issues

Hi Geert Vackier

 

Welcome to the Negear Community. Could you please download the detailed logs from the monitoring page and share with us to debug further?  We may need additional details after looking at your logs.

 

Thanks

Raghu

Message 2 of 9
dynamiX
Star

Re: WAC510 5GHz connectivity issues

i believe i have the same with my iPhone 6 and my MacBook Pro - i see the device is connected, but no access to the internet.

i believe it happened about 3-5 times until now in the past 2-3 days. so once i disable WLAN and enable it again it works fine.

 

i'm on WAC505 AP's

Model: WAC505|Insight Managed Smart Cloud Wireless Access Point
Message 3 of 9
RaghuHR
NETGEAR Expert

Re: WAC510 5GHz connectivity issues

@dynamiX your issue could be different here. Could you please let us know how your AP is connected to network and share the detailed logs for us to debug further?

 

Thanks

Raghu

Message 4 of 9
RaghuHR
NETGEAR Expert

Re: WAC510 5GHz connectivity issues

Just want to follow-up  @Geva  @dynamiX Could you please update your latest feedback?

 

Thanks

Raghu

 

 

Message 5 of 9
dynamiX
Star

Re: WAC510 5GHz connectivity issues

since i posted i have not had any issues anymore

Model: WAC505|Insight Managed Smart Cloud Wireless Access Point
Message 6 of 9
Geva
Tutor

Re: WAC510 5GHz connectivity issues

Sorry, for the past days there were several break and entry (with theft) problems in our house and neighbourhood. This is at the moment our first concern. We didn't have time to investigate a lot during those days.

 

Apparently the issue has several causes. The android devices are running Android 7.x. WAC510's are running the latest firmware. Apparently I had a lot of connects/disconnects at a certain moment, but on one side, Android didn't seem to connect anymore to the internet. Wifi connection was ok, but Android decided that the TCP/IP layer wasn't ok. Apparently is does some scans then, which my business router/firewall didn't like that and its IPS kicked in and blocked the Android devices. Since Android couldn't make a connection at all to the Internet anymore when it got blocked, it disables the wireless connection, and tries again in a few minutes, thus is looks like the wireless connection is failing, while in reality Android lacks in disaplying real notifications : the Wifi didn't fail, the TCP/IP layer failed, since the firewall blocked access. Very frustrating.

 

Since I found out about that and reflashed the WAC510's to it's latest firmware and fine tuned the Intrusion Prevention Service settings in the firewall, I didn't have any issues anymore.

 

So in case someone experiences the same issues : please check your router/firewall logs as well if it's advanced enough to have IPS. Your android device might try to scan your internet connection (TCP/IP layer) and scan your local network through Wifi and might get blocked this way, but it really looks like intermittent Wifi issues.

 

Sorry to have wasted your time, but learn from this one oversight of mine (not checking IPS logs).

 

 

Message 7 of 9
Geva
Tutor

Re: WAC510 5GHz connectivity issues

P.S.: the reason that I think I had these issues primarely over the 5GHz band, is because of the faster connection speeds. Probably Android was able to flood the netwerk/router with it's scans which wasn't possible when using the 2.4GHz band.

Message 8 of 9
RaghuHR
NETGEAR Expert

Re: WAC510 5GHz connectivity issues

Thanks @Geva @dynamiX for your feedback. Glad that you are not seeing issues anymore. Feel free to reach us if you have any further questions/clarifications.  Please mark this as closed by clicking Accept as Solution. 

 

Best regards

Raghu

Message 9 of 9
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