My APs are dropping their broadcasting signal. My phone, Chromecast and security panel keeps dropping wifi. This is happening non stop. I’ve restarted the entire system. This has been going on for 2 days now.
Please help!
You might get better help if you provide some more details.
What firmware are you running?
Did it start after a firmware version?
What are your settings for “always on” and “mesh”?
(If you don’t use , wireless ap ↔ ap links then try without)
Firmware - 2.2i
Started about 4 days ago - not sure when the firmware was released
Always on - active
Mesh - active - using a mesh AP
What are you using as a router? Does it have ICMP enabled on the LAN side?
Im using the Route 10 and I don’t see an ICMP option
The Route10 allows ICMP on the LAN side by default, so unless you created a rule to say otherwise, it should be allowed.
Could I get an invite to the site?
Invite sent - site used is House
Should be better now.
Interesting situation. The meshed AP must use the same 5GHz channel as the upstream AP. Looked like the wired AP picked a good channel, but it wasn’t a good channel on the mesh side; too much interference. Your mesh was legitimately dropping. Different channel now and way better ping results to the gateway. Please let me know if the dropouts continue.
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Thank you, I greatly appreciate the help
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Of course, happy to help!
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Hi, i seem to have the same problem over the last week
Devices loose wifi, seems wifi disappears for about 10 seconds.
Any help plesse..
Have you tried to implement the solution Matt explained above? Try configuring the channel for the SSID manually. See here for our article on automatic channel planning.
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Hey @Alta-Matt_v2, currently having that issue again. Phone is dropping wifi on and off, Chromecast and Google Home hubs as well. Any assistance would be great. Thank you
Please reinvite me to the site so I can review if the same situation has come up again.
Sent
Ok, this is one of those “a picture is worth a thousand words” situations.
Let’s review your scans (I feel like a doctor typing that). I hope I blurred all sensitive information.
As we can see from the popup in the upper 20% of the screenshot, the AP is doing 30dBm EIRP (power transmitted) on channel 153 at 80MHz wide channels.
Given that this AP is meshed to the other AP, we know that upstream AP must be operating at channel 153 as well, which isn’t shown in the screenshot, but I can confirm; plus it’s required that meshed APs follow its upstream AP’s 5GHz channel.
Now, since 5GHz channels are 20MHz wide (this is why channels 150-152 aren’t shown), we know that the AP is taking up 4 channels (80 / 20 = 4). That will look something like the green box drawn at the bottom.
At the time this screenshot is taken, there’s also a Spectrum device doing the exact same thing. Channel 153 @ 80MHz. Granted, it’s seen at -83, but that’s still enough noise to mess with your day.
What is needed
An 80MHz wide chunk of the 5GHz spectrum
What can be done
-
Exclude channels that interfere from the Auto mechanism
-
Statically set the upstream AP’s channel
Cool, let’s do that
Not so fast. The problem here is interference which you may or may not have control over.
If you don’t have control over that Spectrum device (i.e. it’s a neighbor’s device), then the short explanation is there’s nothing that can be done. Why? Because it’s a fairly safe bet from industry standards as well as the fact that we’ve been down this road before that it’s set to Auto channel selection and the widest channel width the hardware can do. This means that every time it reboots, the channel it chooses will be random (but theoretically the least interfered with channel).
Now you’d think that it would see your APs same as your APs are seeing it and avoid those channels, right? That’s a negative, ghost rider. Unfortunately, Auto is historically a terrible choice. Most “Auto” mechanisms are absolutely garbage, in my experience.
So let’s say we excluded the channels as shown in the screenshot so the Alta APs don’t use them. The next time that Spectrum device reboots, it may choose another channel which means 149-161 are now free to use, but it may stomp on the channel(s) the APs are currently using.
The best solution
Kill that Spectrum device if possible. If it’s provided to you by your ISP, it should be as easy as disabling WiFi.
If that’s not an option (i.e. it’s not under your control), then there’s not much that can be done, unfortunately.
The good news is Alta’s auto mechanism doesn’t just run at boot, it runs at boot + the middle of the night, daily. So if necessary, the APs will switch channels in the middle of the night to avoid interference. In this case, either:
- The threshold to switch channels hasn’t been tripped, which is understandable
- The Spectrum device has gone to channel 153 between intervals
Additionally, it appears the APs are a bit too close together. Ideally you’d want them to see each other between -60 and -70, but they’re seeing each other at -56 and -57, respectively. In this case, it works to your advantage due to the higher noise/interference. The 5GHz power can always be tweaked to reduce that overlap. Just a secondary thing that I noticed.
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Wow. lots of information haha. I appreciate the work and help with this. I also noticed for some reason my bedroom TV was connecting to the device(which is across the house) causing the tv to drop connection frequently. I turned the radio power to low and so far this has fixed that.
Indeed, it’s a very complex topic. This is why Auto algorithms have needed love for many years…decades actually. Simply interval based scanning and adjusting is certainly needed due to the dynamic nature of most everyone’s RF environment. Unfortunately, it’s not the easiest thing to accomplish because, traditionally, when a radio’s scanning the environment, it’s not doing its normal duties, i.e. your WiFi will go down. Ours does not drop the connections when scanning, but may have a very brief increase in latency over the AP.
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