While it could be a router bug three things make that unlikely: many others would report a similar problem, its the 2.4GHz band and same thing happened with the Asus router. This leads me to suspect that its something in your area. My guess is that if you switched routers with a friend, the Surf SOHO would work fine in the friends home.
The 2.4GHz band is always a suspect. It is shared by all sorts of things. Microwave ovens, Bluetooth and some cordless phones for example.
The knee jerk obvious things that I see to try:
Chanel 11 on the 2.4GHz band instead of 1 and 5.
Turn on management frame protection in the Surf SOHO
Try firmware version 7 instead of 8. If it is a bug, this may fix things. You can download the latest edition of firmware 7 at Peplinks website.
Use a cheap router as an Access point for the 2.4GHz band and turn off 2.4GHz on the Surf SOHO. Maybe use the prior Asus router. Whether this solves the problem or not, it tells us something.
The Surf SOHO can do a packet trace, but thatâs only helpful if you can repeat a problem on demand. Not useful for something that happens once a week.
Yes, there is a development.
The router has been returned to 5G store for refund minus 10% restocking charge. Peplink did issue a return authorization as well and I hope that 5Gstore will exchange the router and not stick another customer with it. While I am aware of the issues with the 2.4 GHz band, I am totally convinced that this router had serious issues.
Here are some thoughts on the points you made:
While it could be a router bug three things make that unlikely: many others would report a similar problem,
Maybe it was just this particular router BUT
I have seen too many reports of errors and client dumping. I had considered upgrading to a faster Balance One Core with separate AP points at a very substantial cost increase but decided that it was not worth the risk given the numbers of reported issues. More than anything, I wanted reliability. I was willing to spend up to four times the cost of the SOHO router but reports of dumping clients do not seem limited to SOHO and are even happening with separate access points.
its the 2.4GHz band and same thing happened with the Asus router.
Incorrect - the ASUS does not have the dumping issue. I am currently running the old ASUS router and although I had glitches (the reason I went down this rabbit hole to begin with), in the ten days that I have been running on the Asus again showed not a simple client dump compared to many dumps on a single day with the SOHO.
OK, let me reword that ⌠there might be he occasional dump but it has not effected the operation of the link when the SOHO was basically down every time I tried using it and only when I was lucky could I establish communications with the client.
This leads me to suspect that its something in your area. My guess is that if you switched routers with a friend, the Surf SOHO would work fine in the friends home.
Again, if the Asus had shown the same issues I would agree that this is a possibility but given the evidence, I do not believe this to be true.
The 2.4GHz band is always a suspect. It is shared by all sorts of things. Microwave ovens, Bluetooth and some cordless phones for example.
Agreed ⌠but then I should have seen the same issues with the Asus.
The knee jerk obvious things that I see to try:
Chanel 11 on the 2.4GHz band instead of 1 and 5.
Been there, done that, no changes
Turn on management frame protection in the Surf SOHO
Tried that but it would appear that this is not supported yet
Try firmware version 7 instead of 8. If it is a bug, this may fix things. You can download the latest edition of firmware 7 at Peplinks website.
Possible but never tried that
Use a cheap router as an Access point for the 2.4GHz band and turn off 2.4GHz on the Surf SOHO. Maybe use the prior Asus router. Whether this solves the problem or not, it tells us something.
Well I did try the Asus and it worked much better (but had glitches as mentioned above). Still, it gave a workable situation when the SOHO refused connections with the same device (after dumping it) for probably 50% of the time !!!
Did you know that many products are made all over the world?
Did you know even high end expensive products made all over the world can have a glitch or a defect in the many that are produced?
Did you know that itâs possible that you had the one in a million of the routers made have a glitch within itâs electronics. After all it seems to be the only one reporting this unique problem that you have.
Here is something you do not knowâŚOne time I witnessed a Mercedes Benz drive off the dealership lot and three miles later completely die at a red light. Problem with itâŚon board computer glitch.
Moral of the storyâŚdonât give up on a great product because you canât except that products fail. EVEN THE BEST!
First of all, I should say that the bold print in my previous reply was not meant as shouting. I used a string of equal signs as a separator between each question and associated reply and it decided that I wanted the text in bold. So, apologies if it implied me being livid/upset or whatever.
Yes, I understand that stuff dies and excrement sometimes hits the air moving apparatus.
My decision had many reasons but let me mention just a couple:
I live in Canada, 5GStore is located in the USA. While they ship a SOHO anywhere in the continental USA for $5, that doesnât apply to Canada. I am also responsible for getting the SOHO back to them for repair/replacement. One âround tripâ of the SOHO cost me roughly $45 for freight and takes about 15 days under normal circumstances (the returned router is currently stuck in San Francisco since May 11).
I also end up paying 12% of the router value for taxes which becomes difficult to reclaim if the unit is sent back. In other words, there is a non-trivial cost involved in shipping stuff back and forth across the border.
Had the feedback been âwow, that never happensâ, I would have probably asked for either a replacement or upgraded. It wasnât and I didnât.
This was not the first issue with the router. It seemed to have an issue with the gigabit wan link which resulted in reduced throughput. A return authorization was issued but because of cost and time and the performance hit being relatively small, I decided to keep the unit as is.
I also had a situation where a faulty firmware upgrade bricked some functionality of the router. I ended up discovering the issue being a bad firmware upgrade without help from Peplink. This led to a bit of a bad taste in my mouth about tech support and how long issues took to be resolved. It was a very straight forward issue that should have been resolved in a day or two by Peplink with a reply of âthanks for making us aware of this issueâ rather than a week or so of me trying different things before realizing that the new firmware that was served up by Peplink was defective. I might add that it wasnât a minor defect but one that drastically affected operation and cursory testing before releasing the upgrade should have shown it was not ready for prime time.
So, to sum it up, the whole thing was a bit of a shit show and I decided to cut my losses rather than go deeper into the rabbit hole.
I hope that clears things up a bit ⌠it wasnât just a âthis stupid thing isnât working and I want a refundâ
It could be that there were two issues here, both local interference on the 2.4GHz band and a bug in the router.
I have been a computer techie for longer than you would believe. There are some problems that are very hard. It takes someone with sufficient relevant background and an open mind to think of everything that might be the problem, combined with a ton of tenacity and time to kick the tires on every theory. Very few people can do this.
I personally failed this recently when I did not consider that the Ethernet connection between two devices might be the source of a problem. I failed to think out of the box as they say because Ethernet is never the problem. Until it is.
Too bad you never tried firmware 7. I have had a problem on firmware 8 that did not occur on firmware 7. And the list of bugs fixed in firmware 8.1 is long, so trying that too would have made sense.
I have been a computer tech for many many years (now retired) and yes, I have seen some pretty weird stuff in my time. Firmware 8.1 was not available by the time I sent back the router. Had Peplink said â8.1 is about to come out, please hang on a few daysâ I would have certainly done that.
As for the WAN link, were you getting speeds less than 120Mbps? No one speed is perfect, you really need to use two at the least.
As for the bad firmware update, at least Peplink lets us easily reboot to the prior firmware. And, if the bad firmware was v8, it does seem unusually buggy. And I say that having skipped 8.0 and 8.0.1 and starting instead with 8.0.2.
I failed to suggest earlier restoring the router to factory fresh state.
My experience with 5Gstore tech support has been that they can deal with simple stuff only and your problem here was far from simple. That may be unfair as I have not tested them very often, but the little I have seen of them dealing with a hard problem has not been good.
Roughly 20 ⌠but that is some time ago.
I was trained as an Industrial Electronics Technologist.
I am no whiz bang expert in any one particular sector of electronics or computer technologies but I am not a typical brainless consumer either.
5GStoreâs tech support was basically âlevel 1â before they kicked it up to Peplink. Alas, the Peplink support wasnât much better and the standard go-to reply was to say âhere is your RMA, send the device in for exchangeâ
Having said that, they canât expect a customer to be technically up-to-date so beyond the level-1 things such as rebooting, resetting, making sure everything is plugged in etc is not too practical. The one disappointing thing I ran across - I sent in several diagnostic reports and not once was I told what these reports actually showed. Oh, same with remote support - I donât know if they even bothered to go into my router to do any remote support.
The router came with 8.0 I think and I upgraded to 8.0.2 before doing anything else.
An Industrial Electronics Technologist works on pretty much anything electronics related that is not consumer oriented. For example anything in a manufacturing plant. They are also used as the assistants to electrical/electronic engineers testing out and making the stuff engineers design work
Having said that, I have substantial engineering training as well although I never used it.
No mainframe experience other than having written programs on a mainframe while at university. Punch cards anyone ?
As far as âLevel-1â, that has nothing to do with mainframes but rather is a common term used in customer support. All customer support calls end up at level 1 where the stupid mistakes get screened out (is the power light on?). Level-1 support is usually based on a script and very little tech experience (if any) is required. Level-2 support, the next level, should have a good understanding of the product being supported including technical knowledge. Level-3 is generally the engineering folks that mere mortals never get to speak to.
Iâm facing the same issue as you described, I bought 3 SOHO and face the same issue with two of them. I have a ticket open right now. Is weird just during the day all the clients drops from network but the router still alive and I able to reach the admin page and none errors are logged.
