[RT-AC5300] wireless devices cannot communicate to other wireless devices

[airlik]

I first noticed the problem when trying to set up my Harmony Hub... my phone could not communicate with the hub, and the Harmony software has to basically proxy through their servers to send commands to my hub. At the time, I couldn't get my phone to "see" the Hub on my network... but because of their server control, I could live with it.

I also noticed that while I can print just fine on my wireless HP network printer from my wired home PC, I cannot get to the printer at all from any of the wireless laptops (kitchen and kid laptops), and while printing from my iPhone used to work fine, at some point in the last year it seems to have stopped working.

Last weekend I bought a Sonos One. Setup failed from my phone right around the time the Sonos was connecting to my wireless network. Router status shows the Sonos is connected, and I can run the Sonos software on my wired home PC and control the Sonos just fine... but the app on my phone cannot see the Sonos on the network, nor can my wireless laptops connect to it.

So - wired to wireless is fine, wired to wired is fine, wireless to wired is fine (can see Plex on my NAS from my iPhone), but wireless to wireless just ... fails.

What I've tried...
- rebooted the router a few times
- made sure all involved devices were on the same SSID
- used WiFi Analyzer to find a less crowded band and moved the router to it
- made sure AP isolation is turned off. also tried turning it on, saving, then turning off and saving again - just in case there was a bit somewhere in the wrong state that needed overwriting
- did a factory reset. i actually did this a couple of months ago when my wireless performance and range tanked for no apparent reason... the factory reset and multiple reboots suggested by Asus support did the trick for that, but this wireless-to-wireless problem persisted before and after that effort
- I have spent a couple of hours with well-intentioned Asus support folks, but they can't seem to get past any issue not fixed by a reboot, or suggesting I do things I've already tried (or that didn't seem to make sense, but I tried them anyway and they didn't help either).
- internet searches yielded results suggesting i try disabling air time fairness, but this also didn't seem to help

Has anyone run into something similar? I have an extra ASUS router I picked up to set it up as an AIMesh node at the top of the stairs (better bedroom coverage, I'm hoping), and was thinking of setting it up as my primary router for a test to see if it also has this problem... but the 5300 has such better coverage than my previous router, so I'd ideally like to stick with it.

Any tips would be appreciated!

 

[GuruGuy]

I first noticed the problem when trying to set up my Harmony Hub... my phone could not communicate with the hub, and the Harmony software has to basically proxy through their servers to send commands to my hub. At the time, I couldn't get my phone to "see" the Hub on my network... but because of their server control, I could live with it.

I also noticed that while I can print just fine on my wireless HP network printer from my wired home PC, I cannot get to the printer at all from any of the wireless laptops (kitchen and kid laptops), and while printing from my iPhone used to work fine, at some point in the last year it seems to have stopped working.

Last weekend I bought a Sonos One. Setup failed from my phone right around the time the Sonos was connecting to my wireless network. Router status shows the Sonos is connected, and I can run the Sonos software on my wired home PC and control the Sonos just fine... but the app on my phone cannot see the Sonos on the network, nor can my wireless laptops connect to it.

So - wired to wireless is fine, wired to wired is fine, wireless to wired is fine (can see Plex on my NAS from my iPhone), but wireless to wireless just ... fails.

What I've tried...
- rebooted the router a few times
- made sure all involved devices were on the same SSID
- used WiFi Analyzer to find a less crowded band and moved the router to it
- made sure AP isolation is turned off. also tried turning it on, saving, then turning off and saving again - just in case there was a bit somewhere in the wrong state that needed overwriting
- did a factory reset. i actually did this a couple of months ago when my wireless performance and range tanked for no apparent reason... the factory reset and multiple reboots suggested by Asus support did the trick for that, but this wireless-to-wireless problem persisted before and after that effort
- I have spent a couple of hours with well-intentioned Asus support folks, but they can't seem to get past any issue not fixed by a reboot, or suggesting I do things I've already tried (or that didn't seem to make sense, but I tried them anyway and they didn't help either).
- internet searches yielded results suggesting i try disabling air time fairness, but this also didn't seem to help

Has anyone run into something similar? I have an extra ASUS router I picked up to set it up as an AIMesh node at the top of the stairs (better bedroom coverage, I'm hoping), and was thinking of setting it up as my primary router for a test to see if it also has this problem... but the 5300 has such better coverage than my previous router, so I'd ideally like to stick with it.

Any tips would be appreciated!

\

in your wifi professional settings, is Set AP Isolated turned on? Sounds like it is. If this is a guest network the wireless devices are connecting to, are they set to Access Intranet Off?

 

[ColinTaylor]

I'm not sure what it would prove but could you try it with one device connected to a 2.4GHz network and the other connected to a 5GHz network.

 

[airlik]

\

in your wifi professional settings, is Set AP Isolated turned on? Sounds like it is. If this is a guest network the wireless devices are connecting to, are they set to Access Intranet Off?

AP isolated is off (I even tried toggling it just in case, per above). They're all on the same SSID, which is my primary 2.4ghz one... I have a guest network, but am not using it. Thanks for the suggestions, though.

 

[airlik]

I'm not sure what it would prove but could you try it with one device connected to a 2.4GHz network and the other connected to a 5GHz network.

Thanks - I'll try giving that a shot when I'm home.

 

[airlik]

So I tried putting them on different frequencies, and that didn't work... but I went back and re-tried toggling AP isolation on and off (didn't work this time either), and turned airtime fairness on and off again... and now it works. So... the suggestion others have tried with turning that off seems to have done the trick. I wish the interface would say more about what that feature does to help users assess the likelihood of certain settings being the source of certain problems, but I'm glad it worked. Now if only I could get it back to Asus and their knowledge base so the next frustrated Sonos user who contacts their support folks can come away happy...

Haven't had a chance to see if this fixes all the printing problems from wireless devices I've been having, but looking forward to finding out!