Apple Devices: Problems connecting to WiFi Network
I am hitting similar issues as in the following threads, though it manifests itself in slightly different ways and the solutions proposed haven’t addressed the behaviors I’ve been seeing:
https://community.tp-link.com/en/business/forum/topic/728382
https://community.tp-link.com/en/business/forum/topic/592190
After adding a new AP (EAP610), some of my Apple devices stopped being able to connect to the network with what appear to be authentication failures (“Failed to connect to the network: XXX”). Sometimes the connection works briefly, but then the device gets kicked off or otherwise drops the connection. Similarly, some HomeKit devices (mainly a Logitech camera and Meross switch) have now been unable to rejoin the network (even after reset to factory defaults). Every affected device was able to connect without any issues before.
On iOS, forgetting and reconnecting would not fix the issue. Only after resetting network settings (iOS instructions) was I able to reconnect. This technique wasn’t able to reset the issue for a HomePod or for several HomeKit devices that are still unable to connect (that is, be added) to the network.
My configuration is relatively stock / default (details below) — three APs, one SSID, WPA2-PSK/AES, no Mesh, fixed MAC addresses in my clients, one VLAN, no roaming, OC200 HW controller, ER7206, unmanaged switch, all running the latest firmware for each device.
Here is what I’ve tried (without success):
- Disabled WiFi 6
- Verified use of WPA2-PSK / AES
- Disabled all APs except 1 — still fails (tried with each AP in isolation)
- Disabled Fast roaming
- Deleted, then re-created the SSID
- Reintroduced / swapped-in the previous AP (EAP 225(US) v3.0, 5.1.6)
Config details:
| ER7206 v2.0 |
2.1.2 |
| EAP235-Wall(US) v1.0 |
3.2.3 |
| EAP610(US) v3.0 |
1.5.0 |
| EAP610-Outdoor(US) v1.0 |
1.3.1 |
| OC200 2.0 |
2.19.2 Build 20250110 Rel.75724 |
Each AP is manually set to have minimal channel overlap (2GHz: 1, 11, 6; 5GHz: 36, 149, 40) and slightly lower power. But the problem still occurred during my single AP tests and resetting network settings seems to fix it, so it seems unlikely to be an interference issue.
FWIW, dashboard statistics for the EAP235-Wall device show high “Retried Rate” and “Dropped Rate” levels (60%+) that don’t appear on the other APs. However, pulling this device out of my network (disabling the radios) doesn’t fix the behavior.
My hope was that deleting / recreating the WLAN would return things back to normal, but it’s not clear what further can be reset. Would it be worthwhile to “forget” each AP (from the Config->Manage Device page)? My suspicion is that there’s something odd in the configuration set by the OC200 controller that will just restore the earlier problematic state when it gets re-adopted — so I’m not optimistic this will work.
Short of factory resetting every TPLink device (router, OC200, APs), is there anything else I can try? It seems like there’s a real logical issue here.
