R201P Problems with WIFI

Hello,

More and more we are getting complaints of wifi issues.

From clients that stay connected, but lose internet access. Signals look fine, no weird error logs.

How do we troubleshoot this? Can we debug further? Upgrading to latest versions doesn't help.

Does factory resetting do anything?

Hi 

Please sumbit a request for this issue from our support site to troubelshoot further.

https://support.cambiumnetworks.com/

Best Regards,

Gupta

After attempting to resolve this for weeks and changing one setting at a time, I have found that the new 4.6-R8 firmware along with disabling IP conflict detection has resolved the WiFi disconnect problem. IP conflict detection isn't necessary to have enabled. I have found that at least one device would disconnect every 10 minutes or so. IP confilict detection interval was set to 600 seconds which would explain why this happened every 10 minutes. 

Thought the whole time it had to do with not having enough DHCP leases. This has been tested at my own house along with 2 customers that are trusted sources and were messaging me about wifi disconnects daily before these changes, changes were applied 1 week ago and no issues yet.

IP conflict detection is found under the Network - Advance tabs.

4 Likes

Hope this helps others. We pulled our Cambium routers and moved to Calix. We could get no answers and no fixes thru firmware or tons of testing. It was a huge waste of our time and the biggest miss from Cambium since we first started using their equipment when the company changed from Motorola to Cambium.

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Thanks PhilG . 

Happy to hear,  4.6 has fixed your connectivity issue. 
Just wanted to clarify one point . IP conflict detection is for detecting duplicate IP on WAN Interface and not on LAN/WLAN interface.

Regards,
Nilesh


@Nilesh22 wrote:

Thanks PhilG . 

Happy to hear,  4.6 has fixed your connectivity issue. 
Just wanted to clarify one point . IP conflict detection is for detecting duplicate IP on WAN Interface and not on LAN/WLAN interface.

Regards,
Nilesh


Perhaps it would have been better to specify it in the guide. I always believed it worked at the LAN level ...

Thank you PhilG!

There are many issues with the cnPilot R series routers. Some can only run certain firmware to prevent the bugs popping up, but one thing that stands out is the complete and utter avoidance from Cambium to acknowledge that there is even a problem let alone many.

To sum it up:

  1. R190v routers had to run 4.4.2 R2 other wise it would show the Apple device issues.
  2. R190W routers could run the 4.5 R7. Apparently.
  3. R200 – never used them.
  4. R201P routers had to run 4.4.2 R2 otherwise it would show the Apple device issues mentioned in the change-log, but since 4.5 R7 there were significant issues that I couldn't pinpoint, until now. I will revert to 4.5 R7 on a R201P and see if has the same issue.

I will test the 4.6 R16 on the R190v/w's.

What solved the issues on the R201P for me...

  1. TURN OFF the "Hardware NAT Enable" feature under Network/LAN. This causes performance degredation, especialy when more than one wifi device is connected and active. When the second device stops its activity then the performance appears to come back but does still appear to lag from the event.
  2. TURN OFF the "IP conflict detection" feature under Network/Advance. This causes severe performance degredation, especialy when multiple wifi devices are connected and active. If you have this turned on and the symptom occurs, it get progressively worse until th router needs to be rebooted – I've never waited for an extended time to see if it came right.

Other issues NEW / PRE-EXISTING:

  1. NEW: A VLAN (other WAN interface type) with IP bridged and bound to a WiFi SSID is incredibly slow and seems to suffer from the same bugs that occur from points 1 and 2 above, however the main SSID for internet appears fine.
  2. PRE-EXISTING: With the DNS proxy enabled, high interference on the WiFi will cause the proxy to stop responding. To fix this, set the DNS to manual and TURN OFF "DNS Proxy" under Network/LAN.

From all the mac address changes, there is clearly new hardware being rolled out. Perhaps this solves the problem. I wouldn't mind a confirmation of this.

Thanks.

Cheers, Tim.

1 Like

@Nilesh22 wrote:

Thanks PhilG . 

Happy to hear,  4.6 has fixed your connectivity issue. 
Just wanted to clarify one point . IP conflict detection is for detecting duplicate IP on WAN Interface and not on LAN/WLAN interface.

Regards,
Nilesh


Wrong. I can confirm that "IP conflict detection" on R201P with 4.6 R16 causes degredation of the WiFi performance leading to drop-offs and device disconnects.

1 Like

Hi Tim ,

Do you still see these issues with 4.6 ?

Can you send me a mail with the issues in details to nileshkumar.singh@cambiumnetworks.com ? With Configuration files and steps . Or you can log a ticket on our support site  https://support.cambiumnetworks.com/  , We will check and update you .

Regards,

Nilesh

Thank you Tim,

I am confused as to why cambium hasn't been able to provide a fix or even acknowledge that there is indeed an issue with WIFI performance. We have almost 600 cambium routers deployed in our network so it is too late to turn back now.

Cheers, PhilG

Tim,
FYI - R190s do not have the Hardware NAT enable option on the 4.6R16 firmware.

Looks like cambium has changed 4.6-R8 to R16 to align on all platforms. Fingers crossed that R16 doesn't have new bugs even though they claim it's exactly the same as R8. 

So I have found that when we change these configurations it pushes the routers out of sync on cnMaestro. This eliminates us being able to change wifi passwords/SSIDs through cnMaestro because the moment you attempt to change through cnMaestro it will revert the DNS Proxy and Hardware NAT enable settings. DNS numbers are able to be manually set and IP conflic detection stays disabled. 

Have you been successful in pushing configs through cnMaestro or are you doing it manually? 

http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/cnPilot-R-Series-Home-Small/cnPilot-R-series-bug-workarounds-performance-tweaking/m-p/117105#M2111