WiFi devices but not being able to communicate between themselves again

[ADFHogan]

Hey folks,

Seems this problem has cropped up again for me.

Presently running:

• RT-5300AC w/384.7_2
• ICMP snooping enabled for all bands (this is what fixed things last time)
• Tri-Band Smart Connect is enabled

WiFi to wired devices is fine, but WiFi to WiFi is problematic. I'm wondering if we're approaching the limit of what the 5300 can do? Connected to it is:

• WiFi 12+ devices
• Wired 6+ devices

It varies depending on who in the house has turned on which smart TV/gaming console/PC, and if there are folks visiting.

 

[JDB]

I have a 5300 with many more devices than you and no problems at all.
I’m guessing one of the devices is doing something that kills/floods the network.


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[ADFHogan]

Hrrmm.. I think I've figured it out.

New study space (garage conversion) is outside the walls of the house proper, so there's a wall with brick and foil between RT-AC5300 and clients depending on where they are in study. As a stop-gap, I've set up a smaller AP (Raspi + Raspbian + bridge-utils + hostapd) in the study for devices that can't get signal and don't have an ethernet jack.

It was confusing until I realised that my desk is closer to the door back to main part of house, which doesn't have foil, so I was getting a path that didn't need to go through the foil and brick .. The other half's desk is at the back of the space, and has no clear path to the 5300.

 

[ADFHogan]

... not sure if it explains everything though. Still having problems speaking between Yatze on an Android handset connected via WiFi, and Kodi on a notebook (connected by either WiFi or ethernet). Might have to flush/fiddle with Kodi config a bit more.

 

[JDB]

I had similar signal issues in my conservatory as it's 'outside' - added a AC88U to my AiMesh out there and solved the issue.

 

[ADFHogan]

It's unfortunate that AiMesh needs to be a mystery binary blob o' wonder that makes it hard to play nice w/Merlin - for all the embrace of vendors of a Linux core, there's still a lot locked away...

As you've done, I might need to reassign my 5300 to AP only and flash it back to Asus stock, adding some additional APs in mesh, and task something else with NAT/routing/firewall.

 

[JDB]

It is a shame, but equally they’ve got to protect their intellectual property else they’ll just be giving all their competitors the same technology for free!

I’m still really hoping that @RMerlin finds a way to integrate it into his version at some point. From previous comments it sounds like it would be possible if he sacrificed some of his own enhancements. In the early/beta stages of AiMesh it made a lot of sense to stand back and see what happens, but now we are seeing a lot of uptake of AiMesh and I personally think the balance has swung, so that the majority would rather have Merlin+AiMesh than a couple of extra Merlin tweaks/fixes. I’d certainly be interested to know what we would lose!


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[RMerlin]

I’d certainly be interested to know what we would lose!

That's part of the problem - the code being closed, I cannot predict the full extent of the impact it would cause. I already know of potential issues caused by the different storage format for dhcp_staticlist, which might potentially fail to be properly shared between nodes (since an Asus stock node would be unable to properly handle an Asuswrt-Merlin generated dhcp_staticlist, and vice-versa).

 

[JDB]

In that specific case though a Node doesn’t do any dhcp so it wouldn’t matter. And you can’t even log into a Node GUI to see device names or MAC assignments as it’s is blocked. Nodes are just a L2 AP’s with some fancy steering after all.
I get that there may be other examples that might actually have an impact beyond that one though.
Now that everything is unified back into 384 and 380 is retired, is there scope for you to look into it in more detail? New Year project maybe once the AX88U has had a couple of months to settle in as well [emoji51]


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