Hi Team
I just got my Surf Soho Mk3 from Amazon few days ago.
At first, I was so happy to finally got what I really wanted for the router which has “wifi as wan” feature.
I have got a lot of strange things happens afterwards.
1st day, I have set up my router and everything runs perfectly. However, the 2nd day I woke up and try to connect to the net, I found that I can not find my wifi. The router runs fine, status and wifi all green light.
I just cannot find the wifi. I have to do the hard reset and rebuild my AP again.
After I rebuild AP, and it works fine again.
3rd day when I woke up again. I cannot find my wifi again.
I use the incontrol2 to check my router, and router is up. AP is up. But I just cannot find wifi connection with my laptop and my iphone and all other device. It just disappear off the grid.
So, I have to do the hard reset again and upload the setting that I downloaded 2nd day.
Right now, the system still running and I don’t know if I woke up tomorrow, I will find out if wifi disconnect or not?
I checked the log, and I don’t see anything unusual event.
I have also upgrade to the latest firmware.
Also I found that CPU sometime has 100% work load and when it happens, all device connected to router will be kicked out.
I don’t know if that is normal?
Specially when I click Apply changes and CPU jumps to 100% and I lost wifi connection.
Hi Jim,
Welcome to the forum.
It is hard to comment what could be the reasons of this behaviour without having any details about your environment, network and SOHO itself. If you just simple reboot the SOHO without reset/reconfigure it, the SSID not appears back ?
I would suggest to open up a ticket and our support team could take a look at your device. You can open a ticket from here: https://ticket.peplink.com
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You’ll get good user help here, but Peplink has great support that is included with your router. Strongly recommend it.
I have the same router as you (for about 3 years) and I have not had that issue, if that helps reassure you at all that your problem is solvable.
Can I ask you out of curiosity what firmware version you are running on there?
I can not find my wifi.
Do you mean that a Wifi scanner shows that your SSIDs do not exist? If so, there is much to look at using Ethernet connection to the router. For starters, the Client List.
I have to do the hard reset and rebuild my AP again.
Do you mean power cycling or a factory refresh?
I checked the log, and I don’t see anything unusual event.
There are 3 log files, not one. The AP log is probably the most interesting one in this case. Also, the Dashboard page - does it show the SSIDs as being active?
CPU usage when you click Apply Changes will be high for perhaps 20 or 30 seconds. This is normal, it does spike to 100% at times.
As for firmware, the latest is 8.1.1 Release Candidate 3. I suggest using that rather than 8.1.0. You can get it from here in the Forum rather than the support section of peplink.com.
Hi Michael234
Thank you for your reply.
My laptop scans Wi-Fi SSIDs and shows nothing.
I use my landlord’s Wi-Fi connect to internet and use InControl2 to check my device and it shows normal.
However SSID won’t appear on any of my devices (Laptops, iPhones, Switch … etc)
After many trouble going on, I have to push the REST button at the back to rest it.
Then do the setup all over again.
After many tries, I found that 2.5GHz and 5GHz can not run at the same priority1.
Need to set one at Priority 1 and the other one at Priority 2.
If you follow the ticket number i posted above, you should see all the steps i took.
I don’t have RJ45 connector from my laptop, I can only use Wi-Fi to connect, that’s the problem.
I don’t have access to physical ethernet because I live with my landlord and the Wi-Fi is only thing I can get.
As for the firmware, the new one supports WPA3, the peplink team suggest to upgrade it. So I did.
Now I am still waiting for it to crash again, so I can get more info out of it.
Hi Datahead
Thanks for reply.
I use the newest firmware. ( Upgraded)
Jim,
That you are fully dependent on WiFi as WAN does change things. I have used this feature only when my main ISP suffered an outage.
One guess: much has changed in firmware 8, so, if you can, try firmware 7.1.2 (last version of version 7). If it works with firmware 7 not only is it good for you but it also gives Peplink a heads up as to where to look.
My laptop scans Wi-Fi SSIDs and shows nothing.
By “nothing” do you mean none of your SSIDs or no SSIDs at all?
However SSID won’t appear on any of my devices (Laptops, iPhones, Switch … etc)
Just for good luck, I would reboot one of your devices to see if that helps. Does not tell us much, but good to know.
After many trouble going on, I have to push the REST button at the back…
Did you try power cycling? That is, unplug the electricity, wait a minute, then power the router back on?
Trouble tickets are not available to the world, I can not see yours.
As for Ethernet from your laptop, I suggest spending $12 (more or less) for a USB to Ethernet adapter. They are available both for the old (A) and new (C) types of USB.
WPA3 is new and should be avoided, just like all new software should be avoided, for a while at least.
Hi Michael234
No SSID as my devices can not see my router’s SSID that I created and the default.
I can see my landlord’s SSID.
Yes, I am fully depends on WiFi as wan. It’s the main reason I got this router. I have no access to landlord’s physical router at all, only WiFi. I have 25 devices needs internet access and I don’t want my landlord to know that.
When I cannot see my SSID, I done with reboot my devices, done with unplug power supply of router as well.
From last update, I set 5Ghz as priority 1 and 2.4Ghz as priority 2 and WAN as disabled
Today it kicked some of my devices out again.
So the team suggested to disable 2.4Ghz on WAN.
Now 5Ghz on priority 1, others disabled.
I just changed settings accordingly.
Now , I am waiting for something to happen again. Hopefully not.
Maybe another update within a few days…
As Ethernet for the laptop is unnecessary since I can still access through my landlord’s WiFi and connect to my incontrol2 to see what’s going on with my router.
I suppose the first question is whether WiFi as WAN was designed to have input and output on both radio frequency bands. I don’t know.
But, even if this is supposed to work, it strikes me as a bad idea. You are better off using one WiFi band for connecting to the Internet and the other band for connecting to your devices.
If nothing else, an Ethernet connection from your laptop to the router lets you do speed tests on the WAN connection. And it may come in handy for other things in the future.