Flaky WiFi Operations with BR500 and WAC510s

Yeah, I just logged onto to my router using a browser, and it was possible to get the config right there.

Hi JEDIV 

Thank you for sharing the logs. From the log we could see you have enabled the band steering. Could you please disable band steering and see any improments? Most of your devices IoT and all may not support 5 GHz. Please share your feedback on this.

And

• How frequent he is facing the issue?
• Is it recovering on its own or needs to be recovered manually & How?

-Raghu

I am away from home for about a week, so I will have to turn off band steering when I return.  I suppose I could do it remotely, but I am reluctant to do that.

RaghuHR,

I turned off Band Steering and I will report on whether this configuration improves my system stability.  I am confused why that should make a difference, seems Band Steering supposedly is able to detect which devices are dual-capable and only connect the capable devices to 5GHz.  Maybe either the Band Steering doesn't work very well, or some devices are not correctly reporting their functionality?

Also, in answer to your questions:

1.  It's hard to say exactly how often it occurs since it is random.  But I guess I would say once a week or so.

2.  It does seem to correct itself, because no matter what I try I cannot seem to fix things by any action I take, such as reboot of modem, router, or APs.  It is quite frustrating.

Hi guys, well the initial results of turning off band steering are not too good, but I need to give it a few days to settle down.  All but one of the 7-8 WEMO devices went offline and haven't come back, and the Sonos gear was not working either.

Hi JEDIV   Could you please share the model detaill of your  7-8 WEMO devices?  Do you know these devices supports 5GHz band as well?   Another thing you can try is by disabling instant wifi  and setting Tx power to full will help or not?

https://kb.netgear.com/000060546/How-do-I-customize-my-location-s-instant-WiFi-in-the-Insight-mobile-app

Thanks,

Raghu

WEMO devices:  5 wall toggle switches (one is working); 3 electrical outlet switches (none are working).

WEMO devices are all 2.4GHz

Oh, and Amazon's Echo Dot went down too.

Don't know if you have tried this.    I know that when i turned on the 802.11w PMF,  some of my devices suddenly stopped connecting.

Everything returned to normal after i turned it off again.

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cifellic wrote:

Don't know if you have tried this.    I know that when i turned on the 802.11w PMF,  some of my devices suddenly stopped connecting.

 

Everything returned to normal after i turned it off again.

 

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I checked and I do not have PMF turned on.  Thanks for the suggestion.

 

 

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RaghuHR wrote:

Hi JEDIV   Another thing you can try is by disabling instant wifi  and setting Tx power to full will help or not?

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My TX power was set to Auto, and when I went to change it to Full, it actually said Auto (Quarter).  So I have said all radios at both frequences to Full.

 

As for as the setting of Instant Wifi, I haven't been able to figure out how to disable that.  Let me look at the link you sent one more time.

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RaghuHR wrote:

Hi JEDIV    Another thing you can try is by disabling instant wifi?

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Under Instant Wifi, both the Auto Channel and the Auto Power switches are turned off.  But after a few seconds that page times out.

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RaghuHR wrote:

Another strange phenomenon that occurs a lot during these times of flakiness.  Many of my desktop applications (and sometimes IOS applications) will give me an error message saying that I have no internet connectivity.  And yet both IOS and my Windows 10 desktop are showing that I do have internet connectivity, and other applications work just fine (like the browser for example).  FYI, I do have NordVPN, but in this most recent episode I do not have it connected.

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JEDIV wrote:

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RaghuHR wrote:

Another strange phenomenon that occurs a lot during these times of flakiness.  Many of my desktop applications (and sometimes IOS applications) will give me an error message saying that I have no internet connectivity.  And yet both IOS and my Windows 10 desktop are showing that I do have internet connectivity, and other applications work just fine (like the browser for example).  FYI, I do have NordVPN, but in this most recent episode I do not have it connected.

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For example, when I was trying this AM to restore a WEMO light switch, all the process worked fine, but then it could not connect to my local Wifi, but another indication was that I did not have internet connectivity.  I think these things are all related.

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JEDIV wrote:

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RaghuHR wrote:

One other observation.  On the Insight app, all the devices which are not currently connected to the Wifi are shown as being clients to one or another of the 4 access points.  But they are in fact not acting as clients; i.e., they aren't working.

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JEDIV wrote:

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RaghuHR wrote:

So far, the changes I have made (Disabled band steering, disabled instant wifi, and set TX power to full) have not done anything.  If anything it's worse.  I cannot get two WEMO switches connected again or a WEMO smart switch.  Also, three of my nest cameras are offline (one Outdoor CAM, one NestCam, and one old DropCam Pro).  The other nest cameras are still working OK.  

But here is a real strange one.  My Nest thermostats show as offline on the Nest App and via the web interface, but on the device itself the network connection shows as working just fine.