Wifi outages and instability with latest firmware V2.0.0.74

[gstr]

Hello I am experiencing wifi outages following my upgrade to V2.0.0.74. 

In my network I have 9 wifi cameras that stream to a dvr. At any given time there is a constant demand between 15 to 20 mbps bandwidth utilized by the cameras alone. My dvr also sends out push notifications when camera is not available. This makes it easy for me to know when things go south in the network. Also would like to point out that all cameras are connected to the 2.4G network.

With the previous firmware 1.X before the 2.0 update things were extremelly stable. Wifi network was solid and was barely getting any notifications for camera outages. 

However with the new firmware things are all that perfect anymore. Every few days (3 to 4 days) I am experiencing an outage. During this the cameras start to disconnect from wifi one after the other and my dvr sends a bunch of notifications for unreachable camera streams. When this happens other devices start to struggle as well like echo units around the house experience disconnections. (The echos are connected to the 5G network). When the outages occur the wired part of the network works just fine. I am able to browse the speed test just fine, and I have isolated the issues only to the wifi.

At this point I need to restart the Orbis to get everything 100% available. It would be good if we had an option for scheduled reboots so we can avoid the manual reboots when things impload.

Are there any fixes coming up for stability ? The version 1.X was legendery for me. I was surprised how available and for how long the wifi was going strong. I hope things improve with the 2.0 OS as well.

Regards,

[st_shaw]

What model(s) are the cameras? You might just be overlaoding the 2.4 G channel.  Did you try lowering the bitrate, or shutting down a couple cameras, to see if that solves the issue?

There is another user on here that was trying to push 8 cameras at 4 Mbps each (32 Mbps) using 802.11g on 2.4.  He was having issues as well, whcih I would expect given that 802.11g sync speed is only 54 Mbps.

[gstr]

I have a mix of hikvision cameras. Most of them are DS-2CD2432F. I have reduced the bandwidth to the minium actually that still has enough acceptable resolution and quality. I had gone through the drill long time ago and have kept the same settings for some time now. The average utilization that I see is around 15Mbps, its not too extreme. On top of that I am streaming as well easily 30 to 40Mbps plex content across the network (those are on 5G) so I dont experience any bottlenecks. From speed tests with iperf I get around 100Mbps to my home theater across the house while cameras are recording so there is plenty of bandwidth. The only thing that has changed the past weeks is firmware.

Before with 1.X (latest version) it got super stable and had no issues for days and weeks both cameras and plex streaming seamless. Latelly with 2.0 I get those hickups and gets to a meltdown. Reboot eventually fixes it.

[st_shaw]

The DS-2CD2432F cameras appear to have 802.11n (150 Mbps) which is a little better than 802.11g (54 Mbps).  Are all of your cameras 802.11n?

Your throughput on 5 G and iperf network throughput sounds good.  However, these numbers have nothing to do with 2.4 GHz WiFi utilization.

The issue with 2.4 GHz WiFi is one of airtime.  There is only a fixed amount of time for all clients to share.  Slower clients will take proportionately more airtime.  Each client will connect at a different rate, based on the signal quality of that client.  Even though your cameras can connect at a maximum rate of 150 Mbps, your cameras will connect at a lower rate if they are not right next to the AP. If a camera is far away, sees interference from Bluetooth etc., or is not connected to the closest Orbi, that camera could be connecting at rates as slow as 15 Mbps.  One camera connected at 15 Mbps, would take 10X the airtime of one camera connected at 150!  That would drastically reduce your total available throughput.  So, it's definitely not a given that you have plenty of bandwidth available. You still might need to reduce the bit rate or move cameras so they get a better signal.

Often after a reboot, cameras will not connect to the Orbi with the best signal.  It might help if you go through and power-cycle every one of your cameras.  This should ensure each is connected to the Orbi with the best signal.  

[gstr]

Thanks !! for the in depth reply. This is good information.

Each camera is configured to 2000Kbps H264. The average of around 15Mbps is among all cameras actually. Also I do have the cameras on a daily reboot schedule.

I havent changed much in this configuration in the past 6 months and the number and type of wifi clients hasnt changed also. The majority of clients are in the 5G spectrum except cameras of course since those dont support 5G. I started suspecting the firmware since it was the only significant network change inthe past weeks.

I will continue experimenting some more with the cameras and report with any new helpful findings.