New (second) Surf Soho and more of the same. This time it has only been the wifi instead of all the other problems (so far) but it’s a constant nag “hey good job wasting another $200”. Never had problems like this with a 15 year old wrt54gs of cheap belkins. I’m getting constant disconnects regardless of device, regardless of band, regardless of interference. I’ve tried suggestions from other posts to no avail (for example, changing DHCP lease time).
Lots of disassociations, see wifi event log. You’ll only see 5GHz since 2.4 is packed but it happens there too if i turn it on. This happened both before and after moving from a more rural/suburban to city-ish area with little to lots of wifi networks around.
I’m not even asking for help at this point, I dont want it. I just want you to fix the dang router. It’s been happening for months but I’m just posting now to let you know that 8.1.1 didnt fix it, try again.
So, if you don’t want help - what is the point of your post? Just bad-mouthing the SOHO router? Most of the folks that frequent these forums do so out of love for the Peplink products. Intentional or not, your posts come across very derogatory and do not really instill any desire to help. However, if you want some help - please continue reading. If not, see ya.
Clients associate and disassociate all the time. It isn’t an error. Modern wifi client devices all have very aggressive power saving features. One of which is to turn the network interfaces off when the device is locked. Apple devices are probably the worst. Since midnight this morning, my phone has associated 30 times, and disassociated 30 times. If you have an apple watch - you can easily double that number.
Is the device in your logs having some kind of issue connecting or using the internet? Or are these log entries the “disconnection”? I don’t believe that Netgear, Linksys, TP-link, etc offer logging to the level of detail that is given inside of Peplink gear - which is probably why you haven’t seen it on any of that gear. At least it isn’t available using default firmware on consumer grade gear.
These log entries are there to assist in diagnosing client side connectivity issues and/or roaming configuration validation.
If it is an issue with a device being “connected”, but then timing out getting to the internet (loading an email, web page, etc.) - you might try setting a static IP on the client side device. I have had good luck with using this strategy with troublesome clients (mainly older clients and/or clients that do a bunch of wake/sleep/wake throughout the day).
In OP’s defence, FW 8.1.1 does appear to be a bit of a dud judging solely on the number of trouble related posts mentioning it on the forum. Anecdotally, the FW 6 days were rock solid compared to some of the mystery issues I experienced as well as read about on the later FW 7 and now FW 8 builds.
well, i stopped after the first paragraph. I’d rather not bad mouth it, I really want to like the soho and want something that actually works. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find solutions on the forum and have finally thrown my hand up and settled on the problem is just firmware and that’s not something I can fix. All I’m doing is letting ya’ll know that the AP capability still has issues.
(Everyone can prob stop reading here, or at line 1 above for that matter since I’m just whining)
What drives me crazy is that these aren’t supposed to be consumer devices - I would expect consumer devices to have regular issues, no security, and flaky behavior. I wouldn’t expect that from enterprise/large office/small office equipment or from [by all other appearances] a quality brand and manufacturer. I know Peplink can get this right… I KNOW they can - I picked up an AP One for a detached workshop within the last year and have had → 0 ← issues with it. It works perfectly with every device that the soho struggles with. (Maybe I should use that with an unmanaged switch as my router, but then i’d need to shell out again for another AP)
What also gets me is that I feel like I have been patient. I’ve has a soho for several years now but I’ve never not had a problem of one type or another. I waited well over a year before making any comments about all the issues with my first one since I was expecting updates/fixes (Granted not every issue was present day 1 - I assume some were a result of firmware updates and others were because the unit was a dud) and after I did, my support essentially amounted to ‘open a ticket’ which lead to ‘you’re out of warranty, sorry, ticket closed.’ I finally decide to give soho another shot and it seems like I go right back to the same day 1 behavior of the last one with wifi drop issues. I mean, sometimes i’m on professional calls when these drops happen and everything just stops while the phone/computer starts reconnecting to the wifi; thankfully people have mostly gotten used to covid telework issues
