The co-operative debugging on this Wi-Fi issue has been quite impressive.
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I too can confirm the “dropping” of 2.4GHz devices. Sadly, I didn’t catch this problem until after I had updated a Balance 20X at work and a SOHO MK3 at home. Now I have connection issues at both locations and as outlined here in detail, rolling back to old firmware or old config files does NOTHING. Hey Peplink Support, is this being escalated as a priority or is this going to be a months long fix?
Similar issues here on my Balance 20X that I just unboxed and deployed. Wi-Fi devices won’t connect at all on any band with 8.1.2. Rolling back to 8.1.0 works for 2-24 hours before clients can’t connect anymore. Sometimes a power cycle of the router helps, sometimes not. I had to turn my old Ubiquiti AP back on just to get Wi-Fi working in the office again. I have a ticket open with my distributor, they assure me they are opening a ticket with Peplink engineering.
Do any of you have a Mac machine on Big Sur? You can do a packet capture for Wifi by using the built in wireless diagnostics.
I have done a bunch so far and sent them to support.
If your issue is anything like mine, it’s that there is no info on the Peplink device because the devices never attempt to do 802.11 auth (not the same as WPA auth).
IMO the issue isn’t what is the Peplink doing wrong but what isn’t it doing or sending.
If more people send captures then support can compare and develop a theory.
So far onboard diagnostics doesn’t seem to be able to get the info that is needed. Hence why I have been doing independent captures in Wifi monitor mode.
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https://forum.peplink.com/t/join-us-be-a-peplink-technical-support-engineer-tier-1/36600
In case you have some time in front of you…
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Hi Scott. I feel your frustration and that of the others. But I can tell you the support engineers are actively working on a similar situation for us. While I can’t say how long the process will take I can tell you we receive a message every morning (USA time) giving us an update as to what occurred over night. And, I know the dev engineers are very involved. My strong impression is yes, Peplink is according this a high priority. I’ll also say that I have huge confidence in those involved. While I’ve never met them I can say every one has given us great help in the past – for which we are very thankful. Peplink tends to be far, far more responsive to issues that its competition.
If you have not filed a ticket I recommend you do so – and the post the number here.
Rick
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No, I sold my MacBook Pro last year. I guess I could install Wireshark on my PC if I get time. More likely I can get one of my staff to do so later today.
I observed over the day yesterday that different clients CAN connect at different times. Sometimes my printer and iPhone can connect, sometimes my laptop can, sometimes my staff’s Android phone eventually connects, but rarely everything all at once, and sometimes nothing connects at all. Router uptime is 21 hours. I’m going to try to avoid restarting it just to try to continue to observe behavior as uptime increases.
Just FYI Windows OS and Intel NICs generally cannot use monitor mode. There used to be companies that made specialized USB AirCards for this purpose but I think you needed Linux, still. Best bet is Mac for sniffing Wifi traffic.
We rely on Router Utility to help us keep track of the status of quite a number of devices. Yesterday we noted there appears to be a problem with 8.1.2 on two BR1 LTEAs: The cellular signal metrics are not accessible.
Method to reproduce:
- Use iOS v14.5.1
- Load Router Utility and select the router which is running 8.1.2.
- Tap on 'Cellular"
- Tap on Signal Strength to view metrics
- Observe a blank screen
Reverting to FW 8.1.1s033 addresses the problem – all good again.
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Rolled back to firmware version 7.1.2 in a desperate effort to gain back the functionality we’ve lost in our business. Sadly, no change. Clearly whatever broke the 2.4Ghz radio functionality is pretty deep level with the radios rather than just an obscure configuration.
Perhaps I’m just an inpatient person but when people rely on these devices for business and a published firmware update turns a dual band device into a single band device, the fix should be released swiftly. We have business essential devices that are now inoperable. Come on Peplink. Figure out what you broke in the radios and get the fix out there NOW.
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I don’t think you are being impatient. There are major issues with a GA firmware that are not resolved by rolling back and there hasn’t been a post from Peplink in this thread in 9 days, let alone a status update.
I get that diagnosing, fixing, and testing things takes time. Just toss us a bone with an official status update. 
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It’s gotta be something with the AP/radio. Microcode, Firmware, etc. I’m guessing that some open source library was upgraded and it contained something that wasn’t well understood or full scale tested. This kind of stuff happens all the time with software, not surprising it happens w/ firmware too.
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I have the smoking gun. My new pepwave device that I had to buy just for this testing works just fine with all my smart home devices.
The difference between working and non-working device is that the working device sends “ACK” in acknowledgment of Probe Requests. The non-working devices does not. This causes probing devices to ignore the Probe Response completely.
Something in the new firmware update changes the radio behavior and stops sending these “ACKs” for Probe Requests. Can this code/functionality please be rolled back?
@sitloong - I have sent you the captures.
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Yes, we are checking on that. Supposedly all changes will be reverted when downgrade the firmware.
For your issue a bit strange that the devices no longer able to connect back.
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Suppose this is related to the Cellular WAN signal showing issue in the router utility. We will check on it and update again. May i know the router utility firmware version ?
Update :
Known issue for Router utility 2.1.1.
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We checked and the WIFI device is connecting fine in using AP 3.7.3 firmware.
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@Niek_V ,
Niek case the problem device able to connect to SOHO MK3 now. Still monitor the status.
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i have the same unit and same problems. i just upgraded to 8.1.2 last night. i only have 1 vlan though.