Hi all- need advice on an issue please, if anyone out there has some ideas...
I've had my RAX120 since Oct-2019 and mostly without issue. Earlier this week two of my wired connections (both smart home devices) started dropping connections aggressively. (they would join, and then drop within 5-10 seconds)
My setup: RAX120 attached to 8 port TPLink Switch.
What was wierd to me was that the two smart home devices that were aggressively dropping were attached via the Switch. My other wired devices that went direct to RAX120 were stable, and the other devices on the Switch seemed to also be stable. I did have another Switch available, so I attached that to a different RAX120 port and then the two smart home devices to that new Switch and then all my wired connections were stable again. Thus, I figured that I had some ports going bad on the old Switch (which was ~6yrs old anyways) so I got a brand new Switch to replace it.
After putting in the brand new Switch, and patching all my wired devices back the way it was before, same issue. Those two particular smart home devices (SmartThings and Lutron Connect, in case anyone's wondering) started aggressively dropping again.
I thought about IP conflict, but there is none. (and anyway, (a) why would it happen out of the blue and (b) not happen when those two devices were on their own Switch)
Switch is fine, it's brand new. I've tried connecting the Switch to all four Ports on the RAX120 and same behavior.
I see tons of posts here on this site about RAX120 dropping wifi connections, but I've not seen any about wired connections dropping.
I suppose I have a "stable" option to run two Switches (my setup now is stable, with two Switches and the two smart home devices connected via their own dedicated 8 port TPLink switch) but that seems dumb since one Switch should work fine.
After a few more hours with this problem yesterday, I think I've narrowed it down to the culprit. I have a newish USB C Ethernet adapter (2.5 Gbit, using RTL8156 Realteck chipset) that seems create issues for any other devices that are on the same switch. (my issues only happen when Cat5e is connected to this particular adapter, even when it's not connected to a computer)
I am guessing that both the RAX120 and my TPLink Switch are actually ok for now, but that something is going on with this new 2.5 GBE adapter. I actually have no idea if the RAX120/TPL are compatible or if the whole setup is supposed to seamlessly drop to 1GBit ... so I've got some more research to do.
At least now I know my issue is at an end-point and does not reside in my network closet...
