Surf not trying second WiFi WAN Profile when first one fails health check

I installed a Pepwave Surf SOHO MK3 (firmware 7.0.3 build 1260) in a shared office community where they provide two WiFi networks for internet connectivity. I added the two WiFi networks as profiles under the WiFi WAN as the highest priority WAN network. There are no other WANs configured. The two WiFI WAN networks lose internet connectivity probably once or twice a day.

The Pepwave is successfully detecting when the current WiFi WAN profile is down using the DNS lookup health check, but it does not seem to attempt or switch to the second WiFi WAN profile. This is evident from reviewing the event log. The only time the Pepwave seems to attempt the second profile is if it fails to authenticate to the WiFi WAN. Is the Pepwave supposed to be switching between the two WiFI profiles within the WAN WiFi or am I supposed to configure this some other way?

Wifi WAN doesn’t fail-over between available WIFI networks, if will only change profiles when the SSID it is currently using is not physically available at all.

A use case would be two profiles one for your home wifi network and another for your office. As you drive away from home the WiFi WAN fails when out of coverage and then when in range of the office it will connect to that SSID.

To do what you want, you’ll need a device connector (or any other wifi to ethernet bridge) connected to the WAN of the SOHO so that you can have two active WiFi WAN connections that you can then fail-over between.

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Thank you for the fast reply!

I found this how-to-configure failover article, which is exactly what I want except that currently both WiFi networks in our shared office are only 2.4Ghz. Maybe someday the landlord will upgrade the networks and then the fail-over solution can be self-contained in the Surf. Incidentally Cox cable has an open 5Ghz network on the devices but those require web page authentication.

Meanwhile I would have asked should I be looking at a USB adapter (if there is one that can source from WiFi) or use a WiFi-to-ethernet bridge. Do you have one that you recommend? I already have a TP-Link WR902AC that I think I can use. I had intended the Surf to fully replace the TP-Link but this solution could work for now.

BTW, I really like the Surf SOHO which seems to be the best solution I can find to this share-office scenario, especially thinking of the security benefits.

The 2.4Ghz signal from the WiFi I am trying to use as the backup is closer to the minimum strength for reliable packet delivery. The TP-Link WR902AC I am using as an ethernet bridge works sometimes better than other times. I am wondering if I might have better luck with the Surf On-The-Go as the wifi-to-ethernet bridge, especially considering it has an external antenna? The Surf’s specs list “Wi-Fi Adapter for Wired Devices” as a mode but its manual notes that turning off the DHCP server doesn’t put it into bridge mode yet doesn’t talk about how to put it into bridge mode. Assuming it could work, what would be the proper configuration for using it as the WiFi-to-ethernet bridge into the WAN of the SOHO?

Fortunately I was able to get the 5Ghz networks enabled on the shared office’s two networks (yes they are distinct networks and not multiple access points on the same network). Now I can use the 5Ghz network as the backup network, configured and self-contained within the SOHO router and in test it appears to work / fail-over nicely. The SOHO I think will prove to be the ideal router in this shared office / shared WiFi situation.

Although I have the SOHO authenticating on the office’s networks it would be a plus if the SOHO were able to also script the captured portal logins to Cox Cable’s open WiFi, which Cox recently started piggy-backing on the office routers. Obviously it is an issue that needs to be taken up with Cox Cable but it can be very frustrating when the office’s internet is failing yet Cox’s open Wifi on the same routers is working. The signal strengths are fine but internet connectivity seems to fail as devices come and go from the network throughout the day.