5GHz not working

[ColinTaylor]

The fact that there is a successful DHCP negotiation after the S8 has been disassociated from eth6 without any apparent re-associations says to me that the S8 has connected to another AP on your LAN. Have you reconnected your AC68U? Do you have any other AP's, repeaters, etc.?

 

[Preskitt.man]

My setup is Primary Router: 86U - connected via ethernet to 68U as an AP. No other routers nor AP's. 5G SSID's are unique between 86U and 68U. The message sequence was from failed (never have had success) attempt to connect 86U. As noted earlier, exact same results occur in this arrangement or if the 68U is turned off. If I connect to 68U, what I see is the Assoc message on the 68U log, and the DHCP messages on the 86U (which is to be exepected). And the connection succeeds. If I connect via 2.4GHz, I have a successful connection on either router. And if I turn off authentication (i.e. make it an open connection) on 5GHz, it succeeds. I also tried on the S8 giving it a static IP address and then connecting to the 86U. That came back with a connection, but said (correctly) No internet was available.

 

[martinr]

My setup is Primary Router: 86U - connected via ethernet to 68U as an AP. No other routers nor AP's. 5G SSID's are unique between 86U and 68U. The message sequence was from failed (never have had success) attempt to connect 86U. As noted earlier, exact same results occur in this arrangement or if the 68U is turned off. If I connect to 68U, what I see is the Assoc message on the 68U log, and the DHCP messages on the 86U (which is to be exepected). And the connection succeeds. If I connect via 2.4GHz, I have a successful connection on either router. And if I turn off authentication (i.e. make it an open connection) on 5GHz, it succeeds. I also tried on the S8 giving it a static IP address and then connecting to the 86U. That came back with a connection, but said (correctly) No internet was available.

Interesting. So when you manually assign an IP address to the S8 on the LAN page of the 86, you can then connect to the 86 on 5GHz and WPA2 Personal. Correct? (Sorry: why should it correctly show No Internet?)

 

[Preskitt.man]

Poor phrasing on my part. Not that is should have correctly showed no internet; rather that it said no internet, and indeed, there was no access to the internet. On the S8, in general, when I connect to a router, there will be a brief message saying checking the quality of the internet connection, followed by a status of connected. In this case, following the message about checking the quality of the connection, I got the message no internet.

 

[ColinTaylor]

My setup is Primary Router: 86U - connected via ethernet to 68U as an AP. No other routers nor AP's. 5G SSID's are unique between 86U and 68U. The message sequence was from failed (never have had success) attempt to connect 86U. As noted earlier, exact same results occur in this arrangement or if the 68U is turned off. If I connect to 68U, what I see is the Assoc message on the 68U log, and the DHCP messages on the 86U (which is to be exepected). And the connection succeeds. If I connect via 2.4GHz, I have a successful connection on either router. And if I turn off authentication (i.e. make it an open connection) on 5GHz, it succeeds. I also tried on the S8 giving it a static IP address and then connecting to the 86U. That came back with a connection, but said (correctly) No internet was available.

Then there must be something else that we're not seeing here. It is impossible for the router to receive a DHCPREQUEST from a client that disconnected from the LAN 4 seconds earlier. DHCP negotiations take factions of a second. Therefore in this instance the S8 must have found another way of connecting to your LAN.

Regardless of that it still doesn't explain why the S8 didn't send a DHCPREQUEST when it was associated with eth6 (well actually it does because you've already said that the S8 can associate but not authenticate). Which brings us back to it being a defective unit. Hopefully when you get your replacement from Amazon it will work straight out of the box.

 

[ScottW]

@Preskitt.man

Two things to try....

1. Make sure the 68U is truly and completely in AP mode (this seems to be the case, as you mention connecting to it and seeing the DHCP messages on the 86U). But make sure the 68U isn't still responding to DHCP broadcasts, even if it isn't handing out addresses or logging the action. BEST bet is to completely turn off the 68U while you're trying to debug the issue with 86U.

2. On your client devices -- like the S8 -- delete or "forget" the connection, reboot the client, and then attempt a fresh connection to the 86U.

 

[Preskitt.man]

I agree something is going on here that we are not seeing, but I don't know what. This has happened on Asus Stock firmware as well as Merlin. It happens with the 68U powered off. I can't count the number of times I have told the phone to forget the network. I go back to my recurring theory - there is something defective in the unit. I am making the following assumptions:
1) Connecting to a device in either 2.4GHz or 5GHz is a fundamental function of a router - regardless of fimrware
2) That the 86U is not fundamentally a flawed product. Searching the net in general, I have not seen many (any?) identical incidents
3) The problem is not device specific (same thing happens with Tablet or PC.
4) The problem is specific to the 5GHz channel
5) Since I can get a free replacement with free shipping (Amazon Prime), I am going that route. And if it happens on the replacement unit, I will tear out my hair (what's left of it).

 

[Smokindog]

Agree with this 100%. Plus go through all the same "reset to factory" protocols.

I haven't read this entire thread so forgive me. I this ONLY an issue with your S8?

After the Pie update I noticed some wonky behavior on my S8+ when there were multiple APs broadcasting the same SSID on the same channel, I don't know what exactly fixed things but I stopped using AiMesh (went to AP mode with manual channel assignments, turned off all the things recommended in many threads here), COMPLETELY factory reset each node (try M&M) and "rebuilt my network" one node at a time, deleted the WiFi connections on the S8+ as suggested, and cleared the cache partition on my phones (https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-34311). I also initially assigned a different passcode to the SSID as I added nodes.

Again, I know this isn't a definitive proof of cause or fix but there's a lot of strange stuff going on recently

@Preskitt.man

Two things to try....

1. Make sure the 68U is truly and completely in AP mode (this seems to be the case, as you mention connecting to it and seeing the DHCP messages on the 86U). But make sure the 68U isn't still responding to DHCP broadcasts, even if it isn't handing out addresses or logging the action. BEST bet is to completely turn off the 68U while you're trying to debug the issue with 86U.

2. On your client devices -- like the S8 -- delete or "forget" the connection, reboot the client, and then attempt a fresh connection to the 86U.

 

[martinr]

I agree something is going on here that we are not seeing, but I don't know what. This has happened on Asus Stock firmware as well as Merlin. It happens with the 68U powered off. I can't count the number of times I have told the phone to forget the network. I go back to my recurring theory - there is something defective in the unit. I am making the following assumptions:
1) Connecting to a device in either 2.4GHz or 5GHz is a fundamental function of a router - regardless of fimrware
2) That the 86U is not fundamentally a flawed product. Searching the net in general, I have not seen many (any?) identical incidents
3) The problem is not device specific (same thing happens with Tablet or PC.
4) The problem is specific to the 5GHz channel
5) Since I can get a free replacement with free shipping (Amazon Prime), I am going that route. And if it happens on the replacement unit, I will tear out my hair (what's left of it).

I love 5). Lots of folks waiting in anticipation for the [Solved] addition to the topic title.

 

[Preskitt.man]

It arrives sometime tomorrow - I will post a (hopefully good) update.

 

[Preskitt.man]

OK - New 86U arrived today. Powered it on (no internet - just lan connection to desktop) - did minimal config - went to connect my S8 to 5G and (drumroll please) - It connected!! Installed Merlin - Still connected. Connected to WAN and other config items - still connected. So,it definitely appears to me it was the router. Interestingly as well, I'm guessing this is a newer hardware rev - what I noticed in the 5G Professional section - one could configure for the DFS channels - that was not there before.

Thank you all for your advice and assistance.