Hi,
I just wanted to share a problem that started happening a couple of days ago and a workaround for it. I use Dual Band Smart Connect, and allow access list for 2.4 GHz to limit the devices that connect to it. When a 2.4 GHz wireless MAC filter is used in ALLOW mode, in conjunction with Dual Band Smart Connect, the smart connect automatically chooses 2.4 GHz band 40 MHz channel bandwidth, which in places where there are many 2.4 GHz routers in range, causes a problem as it is trying to use so much of the spectrum. This left 2.4 GHz clients connected for small periods of time after a radio toggle before it starts to find another 40 MHz control channel, rinse repeat. 5 GHz clients, no problem.
The fix was to shut off 2.4 GHz MAC address filtering, remove all the MAC address filter entries that were ALLOW for 2.4 GHz, and instead, add in the devices you don't want connecting into the 2.4 GHz filter list and pick DENY, and turn on MAC address filtering again.
Voila. Dual Band Smart Connect picks 20 MHz channel bandwidth automatically for the 2.4 GHz band, life is good again.
This was a painful couple of days of trial and error to figure it out. I'm not sure what root cause started the problem, my configuration did not change, was running 384.17 for a while with no problems, and it just started to bug up a couple of nights ago. I tried reverting back to 384.16, couple of factory resets, rebuilding config from scratch, same issue. I'd rather use an implicit DENY for MAC filtering but Dual Band Smart Connect doesn't seem to play nice with it. I'm not sure how long this bug has been around or what triggers it.
I just wanted to share a problem that started happening a couple of days ago and a workaround for it. I use Dual Band Smart Connect, and allow access list for 2.4 GHz to limit the devices that connect to it. When a 2.4 GHz wireless MAC filter is used in ALLOW mode, in conjunction with Dual Band Smart Connect, the smart connect automatically chooses 2.4 GHz band 40 MHz channel bandwidth, which in places where there are many 2.4 GHz routers in range, causes a problem as it is trying to use so much of the spectrum. This left 2.4 GHz clients connected for small periods of time after a radio toggle before it starts to find another 40 MHz control channel, rinse repeat. 5 GHz clients, no problem.
The fix was to shut off 2.4 GHz MAC address filtering, remove all the MAC address filter entries that were ALLOW for 2.4 GHz, and instead, add in the devices you don't want connecting into the 2.4 GHz filter list and pick DENY, and turn on MAC address filtering again.
Voila. Dual Band Smart Connect picks 20 MHz channel bandwidth automatically for the 2.4 GHz band, life is good again.
This was a painful couple of days of trial and error to figure it out. I'm not sure what root cause started the problem, my configuration did not change, was running 384.17 for a while with no problems, and it just started to bug up a couple of nights ago. I tried reverting back to 384.16, couple of factory resets, rebuilding config from scratch, same issue. I'd rather use an implicit DENY for MAC filtering but Dual Band Smart Connect doesn't seem to play nice with it. I'm not sure how long this bug has been around or what triggers it.
