AC68 with N66 AP - Interessting Situation

[Ebartone]

You guys will like this strange situation, or maybe I am off base. I use the same SSID and passwords for both my router and AP, so my clients roam between them - this has worked very well for me. On both devices I had been using _39, again, all has worked well. With the advent of _40 though, I was nervous about installing it on my AC68 due to all the horror stories of rebooting, so decided to wait it out a bit. Yesterday decided that what the heck, I would install _40 in the AP, and leave _39 in the router. This is where it gets interesting. After installing, factory resets, etc., my devices all seemed to need me to forget the network, and bring it back up again to connect to the N66 - no big deal, I would have done it anyway. BUT apparently after I did that, when the devices "roamed" back to the router, they were confused, and could not connect! My totally unprofessional feel is that the driver that required the "forget" to connect to the N66 was not the same as the AC68, and since they were on the same ssid and password, they were not stored as separate configurations. This problem was very repeatable, and on all of my clients. I went back to _39 on the N66 and all is back to normal - I guess I'll be certain to update both devices with the same firmware in the future, when _41 or whatever comes out. Interesting....

 

[L&LD]

Thanks for confirming; this is one I would have guessed.

All devices need to be on the same page (firmware!) within a network.

 

[Ebartone]

Thanks for confirming; this is one I would have guessed.

All devices need to be on the same page (firmware!) within a network.

Well, I'd like to say it was a well planned, scientific experiment with the intent of validating this suspicion, but in reality I just stumbled on it as a screw up!

 

[jlake]

Yeah I don't know. .40 uses EM and I'm not sure if you were using .39-EM on n66u.

If you were jumping to .40, things can get a little funny if you've never used EM before. Using EM for the first time almost always requires a factory reset and removing wireless profiles.

You'll have to keep us posted. I always use different SSIDs and never have any problems.....obviously.

 

[Ebartone]

Yeah I don't know. .40 uses EM and I'm not sure if you were using .39-EM on n66u.

If you were jumping to .40, things can get a little funny if you've never used EM before. Using EM for the first time almost always requires a factory reset and removing wireless profiles.

You'll have to keep us posted. I always use different SSIDs and never have any problems.....obviously.

Yes, I should have mentioned, the n66 was previously using _39-EM. I was under the impression (as you said) that the EM was now just included at the _40 level, so thought it may not be a major change in that regard. I like using the same SSID and password as that allows my clients to roam automatically, transparently, and without hassle. Of course setting them differently would allow me the freedom to pick and choose as I walk around the house I suppose, but really that is fairly inconvenient, not to mention a burden I don't want to put on my family. Can't imagine after spending hundreds of dollars on multiple routers to ask the wife and kids to simply "go to settings on the Ipad, or in Windows, and select a different SSID every time you walk into a different room!" I just like the convenience of letting the clients roam to the best source transparently....