Guys please calm down.
I understand this is partially my fault for not writing a 2 screens long essay what i have done and what i haven't in regards of my setup.
My house is very "radio transparent", walls do not obstruct signal that much. I was living with one AP in the office for years and signal on the second floor was quite ok.
But because i got faster fibre (500Mbps GPON) i decided to purchase AX68 as a main router and move AC68 upstairs to work as AiMesh node.
AC68 uses wired backhaul and of course both routers have 386.4. I would never let them live on different versions unless there would be a compelling reason to do so.
I have set up 2 SSIDs - one for 2.4GHz, another for 5GHz. Laptops, Android TV boxes and tablets are configured to use 5GHz SSID only, while phones are set to use 2.4GHz
so that devices in my network are separated and do not rely on "band steering" or whatever fancy name marketing thinks up for this feature. Plus it is very wonky unless you have an enterprise-level AP (Cisco, HP/Aruba, Ubiquity etc)
Smart TV on the first floor uses cable connected to the AX68 and desktop upstairs is connected to the AC68s LAN port.
APs are not located directly above each other either.
I am using fixed channels - channel 1 for 2.4GHz and 36 for 5GHz.
The node and the router must be spaced out at about -65dBm or more.
Signal from the upstairs router is -70dBm in the office on 2.4GHz band and -75dBm on the 5GHz band.
AiMesh can't force a client to connect to specific AP
Pressing "optimization" button does not work because AC68 uses wired backhaul, optimization only works with wireless backhaul.
This is not assumption, this is response Optimization button gives, when you try to press it with wired backhaul.
AiMesh does offer "bind" option which allows to bind client to the specific AP - that small chain icon next to the client:
When i tried to bind "wrong" device (using farther AP that is) to the closest AP, it claimed that signal from the closest AP "is too weak".
After that AX-capable laptop begun to behave erratically - frequently disconnecting and reconnecting to the network- seems laptop's wireless card wants to use AC68 upstairs but is denied, goes back to AX68, still wants to use AC68 etc... causing reconnects.
That supports your point that binding devices to the specific AP in AiMesh is not a permanent solution.
Additionally AiMesh has Roaming Block list:
No idea how much that could help - laptops should be allowed to roam arround, same with tablets and phones. Only exceptions would be IoT devices and TV boxes.
@pirx73 problem is not 5GHz networks 50m away.
True. They are well below "sensible" threshold - lower than -80dBm, plus they do not use the same channel as i do, My 5GHz network uses channel 36, while other WiFi network i can barely detect uses channel 100
Even on 2.4GHz band strongest "foreign" signal is below -80dBm and that's not on channel 1 either.
The fact clients downstairs prefer to connect to the node upstairs is enough to know the node is too close.
Unfortunately i have no way to remedy that (unless lowering output power of AX68U in wireless settings with that silly Wireless Power slider), i would have to move router outside of office, too much cabling to redo.
5GHz signal in the office where i am sitting right now is -48dBm, that's about 2 meters from the AX68.
that laptops located in the same room as AX68U
Regarding distance - i wrote this^^^. "Same room" unless i live in the palace means laptops are within 1-3 meters away from AX68U.
My laptop has AC wireless card - Intel AC8265, while wife's - Intel AX200, so one client is and one isn't AX-capable.
This happens with mixed AX/AC AiMesh quite often.
This might be the case or at least one of the reasons. Thanks! I was thinking about replacing AC68U with second AX68U, maybe i should go for that sooner.
But as i wrote - before 386.4 problem was not present. I have this setup since May 2021 so for more than half a year and it was stable all the time until 386.4 came along.
P.S. as you can notice from the screenshot it has calmed down by itself... go figure. Both laptops use AX68 now. I did not do any configuration to affect this.
