ASUS aiMesh dropping WiFi Calling during switch

[Levahj]

Very disappointed with the Asus AiMesh. Just installed in late February and during the hand-off between AP's I drop my WiFi calls (on AT&T network) . Found a great article on SNB about hand-offs on a WiFi network and the protocols ( 802.11k,v and/or r must be supported in both the AP and Client) or there will not be a fast enough hand-off to not drop a VOIP call. https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/basics/wireless-basics/33180-how-to-fix-wi-fi-roaming

Seems in the article they called ASUS and asked if they are using 802.11k,v and/or r, and they responded by saying they use a proprietary protocol for hand-off. Probably the reason why many are seeing dropped calls! As of early March 2019 the AI mesh hand-off still drops calls!

I am going to keep after Asus tech support and hope everyone else does as well until this issue can be fixed. Not sure if it can with their proprietary handoff...

 

[L&LD]

Please stop crossposting the same response across threads. A simple link to your original post would be sufficient.

 

[David F Cepeda]

I am curious why so many people need a mesh network in their home. I have one RT-AC88U in my living room coat closet and it covers my entire 1/2-acre property, both stories of my house, and I can even walk a couple hundred feet past my property before my phone drops the WiFi connection. And that's on 2.4 GHz with over a dozen nearby APs visible.

In my house in the Northeast, I could get away with one router, full house, basement even down and around the block. In Florida the houses are built Hurricane proof and big cinder blocks. I have a smaller house in Florida and have more dead spots and weak signals because of this. That's my reason for AI Mesh.

Glad I found this Forum too as I am having issues and will try disabling NAT to see if that works. Will report back.

 

[David F Cepeda]

I lost quite a few hours on this exact same ios wifi calling issue after I enabled Aimesh, but finally got it working and it’s now roaming flawlessly between my three nodes.

This post by Richard on getting wifi calling working on google's mesh is what worked for me on aimesh: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/googlewifi/3SmTK0Vk1P4/YTJLGg5TCAAJ

Note that I set static IP both on the iphone and on the router to avoid DHCP delays when roaming (I saw something in logs, but this may not be needed).

In hope of saving others some pain, here’s my setup and other settings I tweaked to get wifi calling working on aimesh:
--Aimesh with AC5300 base with 2 AC68U nodes (1 node ethernet backbone to base, 2nd is wireless)
--2 SSIDS, for 2.4ghz and 5ghz, with my iphone on 5ghz (2.4ghz is noisy where I live)
--Smartconnect: off
--Roaming assistant: on, -65 dBm
--Airtime Fairness: off
--Universal Beamforming: off
--Port 500 & 4500 UDP forwarded to same ports on my now-static iPhone IP

I don't see these settings on my router and I am using the latest firmware 3.0.0.4.384_45717 with RT-AC88U as the main router and an RT-AC66U_B1 as the node.