Pepwave Max Br1 Drops WI-FI Clients at random

Product Discussion
1

We have a dosen of routers placed around town with 2-3 clients connected to them. I manage all the routers through InControl2 and they have the latest firmware (8.1.3. build 5077).

Randomly, clients drop Wifi connection and cannot connect. I went to one of the places and used Wifi Analyzer. The SSID is present with good signal strength, but I could not connect to it.

Any idea why this keeps happening?

AP settings is_
WPA2 - personal
802.11ng
No boost, but 100% power.
Channel 11.

This is the log from one of our client the moment it got disconnected.

Time message process.name

Aug 12, 2021 @ 16:05:49.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-TEMP-DISABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla" auth_failures=8 duration=90 reason=CONN_FAILED	wpa_supplicant
	
Aug 12, 2021 @ 16:05:48.000	wlp3s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with  (SSID='Audhumbla' freq=2462 MHz)	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 16:05:40.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-REENABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla"	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 16:04:10.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-TEMP-DISABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla" auth_failures=7 duration=90 reason=CONN_FAILED	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 16:04:10.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-REENABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla"	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 16:04:10.000	wlp3s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with  (SSID='Audhumbla' freq=2462 MHz)	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 16:02:38.000	wlp3s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with  (SSID='Audhumbla' freq=2462 MHz)	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 16:02:38.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-TEMP-DISABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla" auth_failures=6 duration=90 reason=CONN_FAILED	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 16:02:00.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-REENABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla"	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 16:00:59.000	wlp3s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with  (SSID='Audhumbla' freq=2462 MHz)	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 16:00:59.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-TEMP-DISABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla" auth_failures=5 duration=60 reason=CONN_FAILED	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 16:00:20.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-REENABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla"	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:59:19.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-REENABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla"	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:59:19.000	wlp3s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with  (SSID='Audhumbla' freq=2462 MHz)	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:59:19.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-TEMP-DISABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla" auth_failures=4 duration=60 reason=CONN_FAILED	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:58:49.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-REENABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla"	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:58:49.000	wlp3s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with  (SSID='Audhumbla' freq=2462 MHz)	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:58:49.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-TEMP-DISABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla" auth_failures=3 duration=30 reason=CONN_FAILED	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:58:28.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-REENABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla"	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:58:28.000	wlp3s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with  (SSID='Audhumbla' freq=2462 MHz)	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:58:28.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-TEMP-DISABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla" auth_failures=2 duration=20 reason=CONN_FAILED	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:58:18.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-SSID-TEMP-DISABLED id=0 ssid="Audhumbla" auth_failures=1 duration=10 reason=CONN_FAILED	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:58:17.000	wlp3s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with  (SSID='Audhumbla' freq=2462 MHz)	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:58:09.000	wlp3s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with  (SSID='Audhumbla' freq=2462 MHz)	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:58:08.000	wlp3s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with  (SSID='Audhumbla' freq=2462 MHz)	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:58:08.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-REGDOM-CHANGE init=DRIVER type=COUNTRY alpha2=CN	wpa_supplicant
		
Aug 12, 2021 @ 15:58:07.000	wlp3s0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid= reason=2	wpa_supplicant
2

Log shows auth_failures. So do the clients connect normally and after sometime no longer work? Are you using a PSK or password? Are these Linux clients trying to connect? Did you have to manually create a wpa_supplicant.conf file for these clients?

3

The clients connect automatically using a PSK. These are Linux clients. No, I did not have to create a it manually.

After the clients lost connection, I tried to connect to the router using my phone and another Windows laptop. I could see the SSID but I could not connect, it wouldnt allow me. It only allowed me to reconnect after I reset the router.

4

How many addresses do you have dedicated to the DHCP pool?

5

We use /24 subnet. The DHCP lease is set to 24 hours.

6

And just to be clear, you aren’t running out of IP address are you within the lease time?

7

No, that I’m 100% sure of as there are only maximum 2-3 clients at location.

I’ve opened I ticket #21080483. Still waiting for a reply regarding reviewing the diagnostic report.

8

That is a standard 802.11 reason code.

Code 2 = “Previous authentication no longer valid”.

This is in my experience most typically a client configuration fault, or the BSS requiring some feature that the client cannot support… or in some cases a sign of something else but more on that later.

Questions:
Has this configuration ever worked reliably on older firmware on the Peplinks?

Have you tested the clients against another type of AP with the same settings (and I mean exactly the same, right down to things like 11k/r/v/w)?

Have you enabled WPA3 on your SSID, if so turn it off and try again - could be a transition mechanism not working perhaps, can’t recall if Peplink make WPA2/3 mixed mode the default now on new SSIDs but something to check.

If you have stuff like PMF (802.11w) or other extensions like 802.11k/r/v enabled try turning them off and see if it resolves the issue. 11k/v are pretty harmless but 11r can make things not connect if they cannot support it and I do not believe Peplink implements 11r with any fallback mechanisms.

Edit:
One more thing - do all of the clients on the AP drop at the same moment and then not reconnect or is it only some clients?

9

Hello and thanks for the feedback.

To answer your questions:

  1. This exact configuration have worked perfectly in 2017 and 2019 with the exact same machines and operating system. The difference now is that we are using wireguard VPN, beats from elasticsearch to monitor and xubuntu 20.04. The only difference in router config is a new SSID, password, and firmware.

  2. Yes, we have 30 routers with the exact same configuration on different locaiton. As of now, we are experiencing disconnects ranging from 1 client, to 2 client at the exact same time. ¨

  3. Pepewave MAX br1 dosent support WPA3, only WPA2 personal.

  4. Only 802.11ng is supported.

  5. Yes, clients drop at the exact same time and it is not possible to reconnect to the WIFI. Even with a completly new device, such as Android phone or Windows PC, it will not connect to the WIFI. Unless I turn it off and on again. Then it will work fine.

10

I’d roll the firmware back then and see if it improves the situation for you as a simple test.

See point above, sounds like you should try an older firmware and see if the problem goes away, if it does not I’d suggest you need to have some device capturing the over the air traffic when this happens and what happens when things try to reconnect - you’d need a proper pcap though with all the 802.11 radiotap headers for this to be useful.

11

I will try to roll back to another firmware, but how safe is it to do so? The last known firmware that I used that had no problem was 7.0.1 I think.

I have setup a test enviroument with one of the affected routers to capture what happens.

12

Update: Looks like I fixed the problem with enabling auto channel in the routers. Before I had manually set all routers to use channel 11 as that is the preferred for 2.4GHz. But after changing to auto channel, no clients have been disconnected and the routers seems to work fine.