I’m enjoying the freedom that the Surf Moho provides when combined with a Verizon JetPack. Thank you for making such a great product. One issue that is a source of irritation for me is that my connection to the router continually gets dropped on my MacBook Pro and on my iPad. I have to turn WiFi off and then back on again to get reconnected. I’ve adjusted many different settings to try and mitigate the issue, but it keeps happening. Do you have any advice on preventing this issue? Thank you.
Make sure your wan links IP networks are exclusive. I.e. Make sure that both WANs don’t have the address 192.168.1.1. Also make sure that your LAN doesn’t overlap with any of the WAN networks.
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I greatly appreciate the help. I have the JetPack set to 192.168.1.1 range and the Surf Moho set to the 192.168.50.1 range. Would this cause a conflict?
No, that shouldn’t cause any conflicts. Do you have another WAN connection running? How many devices do you have attached to that thing and how is the cellular service? Were you driving about when there were issues?
I just have the one WAN connection, and I use it in a fixed spot at my house. The cellular service is at the LTE level. I have quite a few devices running through the Surf Soho (Sonos Speakers, Hue Lights, 3 iOS devices, a Mac, a Windows Machine, HDHomeRun, 2 Airport Expresses, Apple TV, Nintendo). I did change the IP range on the Surf Soho to 172.16.0.1 with a subnet of 255.240.0.0. It seems to be behaving a lot better. I can let you know if there are any more issues. I greatly appreciate the help.
I guess I spoke too soon here. I was able to hardwire my computer to the router, and now I don’t have any more dropouts from the computer. However, from my iPad and iPhone I still get dropped via WiFi. Is there anything else you’d recommend that I try to adjust? Thank you.
Look at your nearby devices. Take note of what channels are in use around you. Make sure your broadcast channels don’t overlap with neighboring APs. Each AP should be on a separate channel. If two are using the same frequency, it is like a radio station between two large cities - it will fade in and out and packet loss occurs.
I have a similar setup in my RV, a Surf SOHO Mk3 and AC791L Jetpack, same ip ranges too. On wifi I have multiple iPhones and iPads and a Mac, plus an Apple TV, ip cam etc.
I have found it very stable and have no dropouts like you describe.
The only issue I have seen is if you leave WiFi Wan on while not it range of a access point it can connect to, it will continually scan every few seconds for one. The wifi radio can’t handle lan traffic when it scans, so this behavior causes all sorts of packet loss on the local wifi network. You have to disable wifi wan manually to clear it up. I hope Peplink improves this behavior in a future firmware.
Do you have WiFi wan enabled?
Thank you for the suggestions and expertise. I imagine it has something to do with my 2 Airport Expresses extending the network and causing some confusion.
I do have WiFi enabled. I may try turning off the WiFi portion of the Pepwave and hard-wiring in my previous wireless router to handle the local wireless traffic.
Just to be clear its not a WiFi enabled issue, its a WiFi WAN enabled issue. that is where you are connecting to the internet through another WiFi network using it as a wan connection.
If you suspect its your airports extending the network I would just try turning them off then upping the transmit power to max on the SOHO including turning boost on. Its a pretty strong access point you may not need extenders.
That’s a good idea. I shall give that a try as well. Thank you for the advice. I’m not entirely sure that it is a WiFI WAN issue though, because the router stays connected to my JetPack and doesn’t lose connection. I know this because my computer is hardwired into the router and doesn’t lose Internet connection.
When you use the Apple airports (not recommended), you should use the “create new” network option and give it the same SSID and authentication settings as what is on the Peplink. I am assuming you have wires ran to the airport expresses.
If you can I would try and use USB with the Jetpack. Thats how my AC791L is and its rock solid, the SOHO charges and gets a wired 400 Mbps USB2 connection to it.
I do use WiFI WAN at home to get the RV to go through my home wifi and at a few campgrounds that actually have ok wifi but otherwise it all through jetpack and everything is very solid so long as I remember to disable wifi wan when moving the RV.
Wow. I didn’t even realize that I could use a USB connection. Thank you for letting me know. I’ll give that a try.
Great info about the AC791L, same hotspot I am planning to use in my setup. Just curious – do you know if they have an iPhone app for the Surf SoHo that makes it easy to switch WiFi WAN on/off? Or better yet…a better solution to the packet loss issue?
Yes their iOS app allows you to enable/disable the wifi wan, about the only thing it lets you change, I use it specifically for this issue.
The better solution would be for them to add a setting in their firmware for how long between network scans like other similar routers have. Far as I know no single wifi radio can scan for networks while serving traffic, but the Peplink scans every few seconds if not connected, completely unnecessary, with a setting I could adjust it to scan every say 5 or 10 minutes, would still get some packet loss when it does scan but every 5 minutes would not be noticeable, when it did get into range of a known network it would come up 5 minutes later, big deal. They said they where going to add this feature, but its been over a year.
The best solution is two separate radios one for LAN one for WAN which you do sort of get with the SOHO as the 2.4 and 5 GHZ are independent, so you only see the issue if you are on the same band as the wifi wan. Higher end routers have two fully independent radios. Also you can just get a separate acces point for LAN and let the SOHO just do WAN I have considered this option but haven’t done it yet.
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That’s a good idea. I’m actually only planning to use 2.4GHz for the WAN side, as dual-band antennas tend to have lower gains, and a lot of public WiFi is still on that spectrum. I could use the 5GHz radio for my LAN. Do you think that would overcome the hunting/packet loss issue? I’m also considering just getting another WiFi AP for the internal network, and letting the Soho handle the WAN side, it sounds like that may be the best option.
If you can for sure stay on 5ghz for LAN while only 2.4 Ghz for WAN you should see no packet loss. I actually use 5ghz wan sometimes and have some 2.4 Ghz only LAN device so its not really a solution.
A separate LAN AP is a good solution and allows you to place it better for interior reception vs where your outdoor antenna wires terminate for the SOHO. I haven’t done it yet as the SOHO has limited LAN ports (wish the WAN port could be switched to LAN) and am trying to keep power consumption to a minimum in the RV, but I may do it anyway.
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