EAP AP's Stop transmitting SSID's while still connected and online.
This thread has been locked for further replies. You can start a new thread to share your ideas or ask questions.
I'm working for different care company's and one of them uses TP-Link AP's (EAP220v1 / 225 / 235).
We already haven't had a very pleasent time working with the controller, but after again updating the controller en firmware to latest version we see inprovements.
But we have a big problem on one of the locations that we can't figure out what is happening.
The problem :
At random times AP's start to drop there signals (SSID's). They will show online, healthy, and connected in the TP-Link controller environment. Nothing has changed in the config, and they still should sent out the SSID's that we need. But in reality the AP's stopped sensing out SSID's, not even default SSID's can be seen.
How to recognize it :
1. Not a single SSID's visable when standing under the AP's, while everything is OK in the config.
2. Logging error appear from AP's that are down with the message "WARNING> : Username and password are successfully updated". (this can be requested on demand by restarting the AP's. Only AP's that don't sent SSID's give this message so far we know, related to this problem.
3. When looking at the building floors, enable the "Coverage" preview that shows an indication of possible range. Ap's that don't sent SSID's anymore actually don't show any theoraticly signal range (red dot). So the controller actually seems to know the AP's are not sending signals anymore?
If you wait a bit longer the whole view wil not show any red/yellow area's anymore as zero AP's sent an SSID. So you will see no difference between toggeling the "Coverage" button.
The work around :
The only way we know how to get these AP's up and running again is by "forgetting" them, and then re-adopt them and enroll them to the correct building with the correct config.
Simply (soft/or hard) restarting does show the AP disconnected and later connected, but doesn't bring the SSID's back.
I'm posting this to document it and in the hope people can recognize these issue's. I'm also posting this in a last attemt to help TP-Link solve this issue or at least take it more serious.
We have been struggeling with this problem for about 1,5 year now. Sometimes it is working for month's, sometimes it goes down 2x a week. And we can't figure out how to reproduce it on command. We have asked for help @ TP-Link, but this turns out to be not so easy. Since more and more use-cases involve WiFi. WiFi is becomming a MUST and so the pressure on good working WiFi is growing to the point that we are now forced to replace all AP's on all locations. This is also gives some weight on the name of these AP's with logical result that we are not likely to advice or use it, unless we see great improvements in the product stability and after-sale/support on these products.
I hope this may come in handy for TP-Link or anyone else.
Hi sir,
Wireless connection is susceptible to environment interference, it may cause the unstable connection problem and SSID disappearance problem. There are many interference source in our environment, especially for 2.4G radio. Such as, the interference of other wireless device, Blue tooth, microwave oven, USB interface. We suggest you scanning the wireless environment by tools, such as inSSIDer or wifi analyzer.
Refer to the following scanning result of WI-FI Analyzer, the wireless environment is much bad.(The are many strong wireless signal which may affect the wireless performance of your AP). We suggest you doing the wireless optimization according to the scanning result.
1) We suggest you set the channel width of each EAP to 20MHz.
2) We suggest you setting the channel of these EAP to 1/6/11 channel respectively in 2.4G radio and setting different channel (36/40/44/48) in 5G radio. It will reduce the wireless interference between each EAP.
3) What’s the distance between each EAP? If the distance is less than 15m, we suggest you lowering down the TX power of EAP.
Please refer to page 83 of Omada Controller to set the channel, channel width, Tx power: https://static.tp-link.com/2017/201711/20171117/1910012227_EAP%20Controller%202.5_UG.pdf
Some advance function, such as Band Steering, Airtime fairness, Load Balance, RSSI Threshold, Rogue AP detection function. It may cause the wireless problem of EAP. So we suggest you closing these functions first for checking.
