Disabling 2.4Ghz Backhaul

[harb]

I have four RBK50 at my summer cottage to provide network coverage from shed to pier.

Voxel has been in use for quite a while (Big Thanks!) but I noticed that there is some flakiness in backhaul connectivity in between main building and warehouse.

Topology is like this:
Basement -(5m)- Main floor RBR -(20m)- Warehouse -(10m)- Sauna

Main floor - Basement was a bit problematic as floor is 10cm concrete with steel baseplate. Placement of devices was quite critical to achieve adequate link quality.

But main challenge was Main floor - Warehouse backhaul that was every now and then dropping to 2.4Ghz and causing disruption and suboptimal performance for clients.

Thus I disabled the 2.4Ghz backhaul by renaming SSID as described in Make Wireless BackHaul Great Again: Disable Orbi 2.4G Backhaul

And this setup now seems to be stable, fast and weather proof (well still waiting for snow) making it possible to work anywhere on the property. Earlier warehouse backhaul xrate was something in between 0 and 400Mbps. Now it is something in between 200 and 260Mbps, definite improvement on stability and quite adequate as I only have 50Mbps Internet connectivity.

The problem is (well not so much but more aesthetic, anyways would be nice to fix) that satelliteinfo does not anymore provide correct information about Sauna backhaul (likely because it is daisy chained):

[
{
"mac address" : "A0:40:A0:5E:3C:22",
"hop" : "1",
"bridge mac" : "A0:40:A0:5E:3C:22",
"backhaul conntype" : "5GHz",
"backhaul rssi" : "-80",
"backhaul macaddress" : "A6:40:A0:5E:3C:25",
"backhaul phytxrate" : "263",
"backhaul phyrxrate" : "260",
"backhaul parentmac" : "9C:3D:CF:F5:63:A2"
},
{
"mac address" : "A0:40:A0:5E:61:F7",
"hop" : "2",
"bridge mac" : "A0:40:A0:5E:61:F7",
"backhaul conntype" : "2.4GHz",
"backhaul rssi" : "-68",
"backhaul macaddress" : "B2:40:A0:5E:61:F7",
"backhaul phytxrate" : "0",
"backhaul phyrxrate" : "0",
"backhaul parentmac" : "A0:40:A0:5E:3C:22"
},
{
"mac address" : "9C:3D:CF:F5:8A:5D",
"hop" : "1",
"bridge mac" : "9C:3D:CF:F5:8A:5D",
"backhaul conntype" : "5GHz",
"backhaul rssi" : "-69",
"backhaul macaddress" : "A2:3D:CF:F5:8A:60",
"backhaul phytxrate" : "585",
"backhaul phyrxrate" : "585",
"backhaul parentmac" : "9C:3D:CF:F5:63:A2"
}
]

Even though the information is available with wlanconfig from warehouse:

ADDR AID CHAN TXRATE RXRATE RSSI MINRSSI MAXRSSI IDLE TXSEQ RXSEQ CAPS ACAPS ERP STATE MAXRATE(DOT11) HTCAPS ASSOCTIME IEs MODE PSMODE
a6:40:a0:5e:61:fa 1 108 650M 650M 24 21 30 0 0 65535 EPs 0 b 0 AWPSM 02:00:53 RSN WME IEEE80211_MODE_11AC_VHT80 0

Just asking if anyone has a clue how to fix this.

 

[digital10]

I thought Orbi has dedicated 5G backhaul and never rely on 2.4?

 

[harb]

I thought Orbi has dedicated 5G backhaul and never rely on 2.4?

Yes, Orbi has dedicated 5Ghz backhaul but it will switch to 2.4Ghz if Netgear's algorithm thinks it's better.

Problem is twofold:
- There is no dedicated radio for 2.4Ghz backhaul and thus clients and backhaul will compete with the same limited rf band
- Algorithm is somewhat flawed (or from another viewpoint optimized to different operating environment) and thus it can result dropping to 2.4Ghz unnecessarily and not resuming to 5Ghz