AX product Wi-Fi connection limits

[IanSav]

Hello Everyone,

This is my first post so please let me know if there are any problems.

I have an ASUS based Wi-Fi mesh network. The routers in the mesh are an RT-AX88U, RT-AX58U, and a RT-AX55. These are all running the latest ASUS production firmware. The coverage in and around my home is working well. My issue is that I have a large number of Wi-Fi based IoT home automation devices spread around the house that are sometimes dropping off the network. This past weekend I added a few more IoT devices and the connection failure rates have become very problematic as many devices now keep falling off the network. They simply can't connect or they are bumped off the network when other devices renew their connections. Most of these devices are using the 2.4GHz band and are connecting to different nodes in the mesh.

I tried creating a Guest Network for a group of the IoT devices but this appears to have had no effect on the issue. It seems to me that I am hitting some sort of limits that I did not expect. The configuration allows 128 devices to be created in the DNS so I assumed that I could simultaneously connect at least that many devices. I have tried searching about this issue and found no satisfactory answers.

1. Can anyone please tell me if there is a defined limit to the number of Wi-Fi devices that can connect to any one router?
2. Is there a connection limit across the whole mesh?
3. Does using a mesh allow for more devices to connect than any single router?
4. Does Merlin have the same limits?
5. Is there a way to increase the number of simultaneous connections to a node/the mesh?

I would welcome any help or advice that would assist me in solving this troubling issue.

Regards,
Ian.

 

[bennor]

How large is a large number of wireless devices? Are you trying to connect them all to a single AiMesh node (if so which one) or to the main router?
It may help if you post readable screenshots of your WiFi settings for the WiFi band/network the devices are having trouble connecting to so others can review to see if something should be changed.
What does the router/aiMesh log indicate when WiFi devices are having trouble connecting/reconnecting?

Others have either reported issues with large numbers of wireless clients, or asked the same question about how many WiFi clients can be connected at any one time. Don't know if there was ever a definitive right answer to cover all routers/nodes. It may vary per router/AiMesh node and it's hardware. If you have a very large number of WiFi clients you either may have potential oversaturation of the WiFi space, or it may be time to move to more capable router/mesh nodes, ones designed intentionally for large numbers of WiFi clients.

 

[IanSav]

I now have about 90-100 devices connected to my home network. All devices with a wired connection option are connected via an Ethernet cable. About 60 devices are trying to connect via Wi-Fi. These Wi-Fi connection are likely to continue to grow as my home automation grows.

The Wi-Fi devices are connecting to different mesh nodes. The RT-AX88U seems to have a stronger signal and is attracting the most devices. The RT-AX58U is next grabbing a smaller, but significant number of devices. The RT-AX55 comes last with only a few devices connecting to it.

I suspect that I am hitting some sort of hard connection limit. As some devices wake up to connect they are forcing other devices to drop off.

I had expected that as I added more nodes to the mesh that the number of available simultaneous connections would increase as the devices attach to different nodes in the mesh. My current observation seems to indicate that this is not the case. It seems like in mesh mode the connection data is shared around the mesh forcing all the nodes to aggregate their connections into some sort of single buffer or pool. That is, all the nodes contribute to a single connection pool that is limited by the size of the pool for one device. As the RT-AX88U is the main node I think it is setting the limit of all possible connections across the mesh.

If I could get answers to my questions I could better understand the issue and be able to make adjustments.

I am, for example, wondering if it would be better to get rid of the mesh and set up each router as an independent access point. I am suspecting that I could connect each of my IoT devices to the nearest router I would manually balance out the number of Wi-Fi devices across each of the routers. Arguably this should triple the number of Wi-Fi devices I can connect to my network. I thought that this is what an ASUS mesh would do for me automatically!

 

[bbunge]

Getting rid of the mesh will not help. You were asked for your WIFI settings for us to review. Where are they?

AS for the disconnects, the Asus default WIFI settings should work. Many IoT clients do not like WPA3 or WPA2/WPA3 so set up a guest network with just WPA2 and a simple password: 8 to 10 characters, upper/lower case letters and numbers - no special characters or spaces. I would also recommend setting the 2.4 GHz to 20 MHz on auto channel and the 5 GHz to 80 MHz on aut channel no DFS. Lower bandwidth will increase the WIFI range.

 

[bennor]

Some other posts that may or may not be relevant. It should be noted that the max number of DHCP connections doesn't mean the max number of clients that one can connect at a given time to the router. Instead the max number appears to be based on a number of factors with no set exact number that applies to every single Asus router.

ASUS AiMesh - Have I exceeded max clients for 6 Nodes? Lots of unresponsive clients.

Long story short, we have a lot of smart home and wireless devices (~165) and I’ve been struggling with wireless clients (usually lights or speakers) dropping out and becoming unresponsive for long periods (45min-2hrs), only to reconnect on their own if I haven’t physically intervened by...

www.snbforums.com

Asus AiMesh Maximum Smart Devices

Hello everyone, I have over 70+ devices including 50+ smart devices operating on 2.4 and 20 odd devices such as phones, ipads, laptops, on the 5ghz band. There are three Asus wireless devices configured in my AiMesh. GT-AX11000 Pro connected to the internet with GT-AX11000 and RT-AC68U...

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Max number of 2.4ghz clients

What is the highest number of clients you have connected to the 2.4ghz band, and that it was still usable?

www.snbforums.com

How many Wi-Fi clients is too many?

I have a GT-AX6000 with 17 client devices on 5 GHz and 18 on 2.4 GHz with a few other ones that connect as needed. I’m wondering how many GT-AX6000 Wi-Fi clients it can handle? My older RT-AC3100 could handle them, but had issues locking up if there were too many clients connected for too long.

www.snbforums.com

Max Wifi Connections on ROG Rapture GT-BE98 Pro?

I am wondering since I can't seem to find an answer anywhere what the max number of connected Wifi clients is on this router. I'd like to know per each of the 4 bands and collectively on all bands. I plan on setting it up with individual wifi names and password per band but have an absolute ton...

rog-forum.asus.com

 

[Tech9]

About 60 devices are trying to connect via Wi-Fi.

Not that many, but AiMesh uses the same channels and in fact all your Wi-Fi connected devices share the same channel bandwidth and wait for each other regardless of the router they are connected to. If you expect more wireless devices coming with many more IoTs perhaps a multi-AP wired system is the better solution going forward. You need some infrastructure investment first. Some folks opt for dedicated APs for IoT devices, another possible solution. Adding more consumer mesh devices is not going to make it better.

 

[IanSav]

Attached are the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi settings as requested. I should also note that both mesh nodes are connected to the RT-AX88U via wired backhaul.

None of the devices have *any* issues connecting to the network in their own right. This definitely appears to be an issue of too many devices trying to be connected at once.

I am sure that this is not an issue of bandwidth. The amount of data exchanged by the IoT devices is minimal. The router status, attached, shown that the CPUs are quite idle and RAM is sitting at 50% usage. I believe that the router has more than enough capacity to do more.

I read through the suggested threads and see that this issue has definitely been discussed before. One of the suggestions offered was to shift the IoT devices to the guest network and separate that guest network from the main local network. I tried this and found it made *no* difference to the end result of how many devices could connect simultaneously.

I think my home automation setup is almost modest in comparison to how big some of the IoT networks are in some user's homes.

I wish someone from ASUS would weigh in and provide some real data about their routers. I would eliminate so much speculation and should allow us to build more reliable networks with their gear.

 

[Tech9]

I wish someone from ASUS would weigh in and provide some real data about their routers.

This is an official Asus FAQ. Compare your settings to what Asus recommends for IoT devices.

[Wireless Router] How to improve compatibility of IoT device with ASUS WiFi 6(802.11 ax) router? | Official Support | ASUS Global

 

[IanSav]

I have adopted the settings in that article and I have split 10 devices off to the Guest Network as a test. Let's see how long the devices stay connected.

 

[bennor]

In addition to some suggestions already made in Asus's FAQ, if having issues with IoT devices avoid using WPA3 or WPA2/WPA3 if the router supports it. Use WPA2-Personal for IoT devices.

The reality is that Asus often doesn't provide detailed information in their support section(s). Leaving it instead to the end user/customer to figure things out and figure out just where the upper limits of their Asus router is, or may be capable of for the end user/customer's use case.

 

[IanSav]

The routers support WPA3 but I am using WPA2.

 

[IanSav]

Well that was fast, devices are already being dropped from the network.

 

[degrub]

What is the RSSI of the specific AP/node at the location of the IOT device that dropped ?
do same for other IOT devices that drop/stay.
Some IOT devices will not keep up with auto channel changes. What are the system logs showing for the IOT devices dropping ? Post them please.

 

[Tech9]

devices are already being dropped

Since you already have Ethernet wires - research better options for high client count support. Depending on your location UniFi, Omada, MikroTik, etc. may have suitable for home use options. It will allow future network expansion and segmentation. With your existing hardware I would attempt breaking AiMesh and using the current "nodes" as access points on different channels (AP Mode). It is a limited configuration option, but may produce somewhat acceptable results until you find something better. It will allow per AP power adjustment as well, not available in AiMesh configuration. Good luck!

 

[CaptainSTX]

Hello Everyone,

This is my first post so please let me know if there are any problems.

I have an ASUS based Wi-Fi mesh network. The routers in the mesh are an RT-AX88U, RT-AX58U, and a RT-AX55. These are all running the latest ASUS production firmware. The coverage in and around my home is working well. My issue is that I have a large number of Wi-Fi based IoT home automation devices spread around the house that are sometimes dropping off the network. This past weekend I added a few more IoT devices and the connection failure rates have become very problematic as many devices now keep falling off the network. They simply can't connect or they are bumped off the network when other devices renew their connections. Most of these devices are using the 2.4GHz band and are connecting to different nodes in the mesh.

I tried creating a Guest Network for a group of the IoT devices but this appears to have had no effect on the issue. It seems to me that I am hitting some sort of limits that I did not expect. The configuration allows 128 devices to be created in the DNS so I assumed that I could simultaneously connect at least that many devices. I have tried searching about this issue and found no satisfactory answers.

1. Can anyone please tell me if there is a defined limit to the number of Wi-Fi devices that can connect to any one router?
2. Is there a connection limit across the whole mesh?
3. Does using a mesh allow for more devices to connect than any single router?
4. Does Merlin have the same limits?
5. Is there a way to increase the number of simultaneous connections to a node/the mesh?

I would welcome any help or advice that would assist me in solving this troubling issue.

Regards,
Ian.

If most of your IoT devices are not mobile It probably would work better for you if you used APs connected by Ethernet to your primary router. APs would be assigned to non-overlapping channels and ideally no AP would have more than 20-30 devices connected to each of its radios. To prevent devices from connecting to a weaker signal each AP would have a unique SSID known only to the devices you want to connect to that particular AP. IoT devices typically require minimal bandwidth so you could use inexpensive/ old N band routers for APs. An advantage of APs using older routers is that older routers don't offer the plethora of signal and security options that seem to confound IoT devices.

 

[bennor]

Well that was fast, devices are already being dropped from the network.

As previously asked post the wireless log from the router (redacting sensitive names if needed), it may also help to post the system log messages around the time the wifi clients drop from the network.

 

[IanSav]

Since my last post, and after noting some of the suggestions, I dug up an old RT-AC66U that I happened to have in a cupboard. I quickly configured it as an access point and reconfigured about 10 IoT devices to use the "new" router on another channel with a distinct SSID. I then restored the RT-AX88U back to its previous/original settings. All the IoT devices have now connected and are all available! The mesh now has 34 2.4GHz devices connected and they all appear stable. So far there have been no drop outs.

I am now convinced that I have been hitting some sort of Wi-Fi mesh connection limit. I will leave this temporary setup running for a while and watch what happens. I am in Australia so it is now early in the morning so I am going to get some sleep and see how the network looks when I wake. If the network is still stable I will either relocate the "new" router to a better and more permanent location or disconnect the RT-AX55 from the mesh and use it as a more contemporary and still supported access point. I will also move more of the IoT devices on to the access point to better balance the load and create more slots on the mesh for other devices.

In doing this quick network rebuild I have lost the logs so I am unable to produce logs from when the issues were active. I think that having everything working in this new network configuration is success enough to not go back just to collect logs.

I thank everyone for their comments and suggestions. I appreciate the help. I will post updates as I test this new network configuration.

 

[bbunge]

Since my last post, and after noting some of the suggestions, I dug up an old RT-AC66U that I happened to have in a cupboard. I quickly configured it as an access point and reconfigured about 10 IoT devices to use the "new" router on another channel with a distinct SSID. I then restored the RT-AX88U back to its previous/original settings. All the IoT devices have now connected and are all available! The mesh now has 34 2.4GHz devices connected and they all appear stable. So far there have been no drop outs.

I am now convinced that I have been hitting some sort of Wi-Fi mesh connection limit. I will leave this temporary setup running for a while and watch what happens. I am in Australia so it is now early in the morning so I am going to get some sleep and see how the network looks when I wake. If the network is still stable I will either relocate the "new" router to a better and more permanent location or disconnect the RT-AX55 from the mesh and use it as a more contemporary and still supported access point. I will also move more of the IoT devices on to the access point to better balance the load and create more slots on the mesh for other devices.

In doing this quick network rebuild I have lost the logs so I am unable to produce logs from when the issues were active. I think that having everything working in this new network configuration is success enough to not go back just to collect logs.

I thank everyone for their comments and suggestions. I appreciate the help. I will post updates as I test this new network configuration.

The fact that the AC66U is working better than the modern routers is likely due to the fact that it supports TKIP as well as AES for WIFI. That means you have old IoT devices...

 

[IanSav]

No, the configuration of the RT-AC66U is exactly the same WPA2 and AES password as I was using on the RT-AX88U.