Odd ASUS ZenWiFi XT9 + IoT Issue

[Tullagh]

Hello!

I have a 2-node XT9 in an old house. It works great – well, except that MoCA is flaky on my old coax wiring, so I switch between MoCA and wireless backhaul.

Given that positive experience, I set up another 2-node XT9, this time with Ethernet backhaul, in a new house with about a zillion 2.4G smart devices (thermostats, appliances, security, etc.).

Now I'm having a weird issue: Every once in a while, a 2.4G device drops its connection – which is fine, sometimes these things deliberately disconnect and reconnect later – but the XT9 thinks it's still connected, so reconnection fails.

The bizarre thing is that I can use the Optimize function in the ASUS app to disconnect and reconnect the device – and that succeeds! – but the actual device is still unhappy. It's as if the XT9 has it confused with another device. Rebooting the XT9 fixes the issue.

Has anyone seen or heard of this sort of issue? Any solutions?

In case it matters, my settings in both locations are mostly factory; I just disable QoS and enable remote management.

Thanks!

 

[kildare]

Are you using fixed IP adresses or DHCP reserved IPs for your IoT devices?

 

[Tullagh]

Are you using fixed IP adresses or DHCP reserved IPs for your IoT devices?

No, I'm using default settings; all IPs are assigned dynamically.

 

[kildare]

You should better use one of the above IP assignment to avoid disconnections caused by periodic IP negotiations.

 

[Tullagh]

You should better use one of the above IP assignment to avoid disconnections caused by periodic IP negotiations.

Hmm, I've never had to do that before. Then again, I've never used so many embedded 2.4G clients before. I'll give it a try. Thank you!

 

[Tullagh]

An update in case anyone is interested:

• I haven't changed anything, but the frequency of this issue has gone down lately. It just happened again after nearly 2 weeks of flawless operation.
• The affected devices don't support static IP assignment. I haven't yet tried to reserve IPs for them on the XT9.
• I found a way to get out of the situation without rebooting the XT9: Temporarily configure Wi-Fi MAC filtering to reject the device. Once it drops off the client list, turn off the MAC filter. After a short delay, the device reconnects successfully.

Cheers!