FYI: AImesh Guest Network Slot 1 causes the inability to ping random clients

[akb]

I wanted to share if anyone who has been using AImesh and enabled guest network 1 slot and set it to be enabled in their guest nodes might have network issues.
I have been basically having this issue for 2 years where random clients sometimes just wont be able to be pinged. I just assumed that it was my noisey envoriment or faulty devices.
I eventually looked through all the threads related to why some clients can not be pinged and stumbled upon someone who had the same issue and their solution which was tested was to disable guestnetwork slot 1 and sharing to aimesh nodes was the issue.
I have confirmed it as well.



TL'DR
If you use AImesh and have a guest network on Slot 1 shared to all the nodes, you might be having the issue where clients can not be pinged. The only remedy is to put the guest network on another slot and router only.

 

[drinkingbird]

I wanted to share if anyone who has been using AImesh and enabled guest network 1 slot and set it to be enabled in their guest nodes might have network issues.
I have been basically having this issue for 2 years where random clients sometimes just wont be able to be pinged. I just assumed that it was my noisey envoriment or faulty devices.
I eventually looked through all the threads related to why some clients can not be pinged and stumbled upon someone who had the same issue and their solution which was tested was to disable guestnetwork slot 1 and sharing to aimesh nodes was the issue.
I have confirmed it as well.



TL'DR
If you use AImesh and have a guest network on Slot 1 shared to all the nodes, you might be having the issue where clients can not be pinged. The only remedy is to put the guest network on another slot and router only.

Do you have "access intranet" enabled or disabled? GW1 treats that setting completely different from 2 and 3. If you have access intranet enabled, all 3 should be identical.

Or are you trying to ping between clients on the same Guest network? I believe they are using isolation to block that, potentially only if access intranet is disabled, not sure on that one haven't tested it recently.

 

[akb]

Do you have "access intranet" enabled or disabled? GW1 treats that setting completely different from 2 and 3. If you have access intranet enabled, all 3 should be identical.

Or are you trying to ping between clients on the same Guest network? I believe they are using isolation to block that, potentially only if access intranet is disabled, not sure on that one haven't tested it recently.

Regardless of setting, before I used it as a way to bridge old and new SSID I had. After I finally for everything on the main SSID I made a guest network.
ALL this time I had network issues until I turned of that Guest network slot one and lo and behold I have a stable network again.

 

[drinkingbird]

Regardless of setting, before I used it as a way to bridge old and new SSID I had. After I finally for everything on the main SSID I made a guest network.
ALL this time I had network issues until I turned of that Guest network slot one and lo and behold I have a stable network again.

If you enable "access intranet" and reboot the router it should effectively just be a second SSID, there isn't anything that would be blocking anything at that point. But generally if you don't need the isolation provided by the new Guest Wireless 1 then just use 2 or 3 like you've found.

It does seem to work well now though (had some issues in the initial 386 firmwares), I'm using it (the VLANs actually come in handy for my purposes) and I also like the fact that I can access stuff on the guest network, but not the other way around. With GW2 and 3 if you disable intranet access, both directions are blocked.

 

[akb]

If you enable "access intranet" and reboot the router it should effectively just be a second SSID, there isn't anything that would be blocking anything at that point. But generally if you don't need the isolation provided by the new Guest Wireless 1 then just use 2 or 3 like you've found.

It does seem to work well now though (had some issues in the initial 386 firmwares), I'm using it (the VLANs actually come in handy for my purposes) and I also like the fact that I can access stuff on the guest network, but not the other way around. With GW2 and 3 if you disable intranet access, both directions are blocked.

What i am saying is no one can even be on the guest network. The main ssid will have the issues. This has been confirmed by simply turning on and off the guest wifi on slot one with sync with ai meah nodes

 

[drinkingbird]

What i am saying is no one can even be on the guest network. The main ssid will have the issues. This has been confirmed by simply turning on and off the guest wifi on slot one with sync with ai meah nodes

Are you using wired or wireless backhaul? Any switches in the path if wired?

GW1 is the only one that will propagate to the nodes so if you want your guest network on the nodes, that's the only one that will work. Are you running latest stable on the router and latest stock (non-merlin) on the nodes? May need a factory reset if you haven't done that in a while.

There are plenty using GW1 across AIMesh and it is working.

 

[lmgray]

Same -- I came across this thread which I think explains what we're seeing: https://www.snbforums.com/threads/rt-ac88u-ap-isolation-keeps-activating.75335/