Since I seem to have become my father and lost all technical skills, can you help me confirm what version firmware I should be using? Currently I am running 5.0.0 Build 20200918 Rel. 58628 and the controller software (which I guess is the wrong version for me) says its up to date.

checking now but I believe i have a v3.

@PBGBBB2020 

OK so im guessing the V5.00 is the firmware on the AP (EAp225) so that fine and upto date.. however it does require v4 of the SDN to work

Im guessing when you check for updates on the controller it says none available?   thats expected as V4 is a manual update due to it being such a big change..  your auto update will only update to the latest version of v3

Go here

https://www.tp-link.com/uk/support/download/oc200/#Firmware

and download this   (marked in yellow)

Go to the OC200 and manual update, point it to this file and it will do the rest.   Just remember to backup as it will reset the config back to factory defaults  :)

@Philbert 

So i originally installed v3 of the sdn because it had the most recent time stamp, so I assumed it was the newest.

The eap is v5 of the firmware. I installed the new controller software (following the instructions). I restored my backed up file from v3. Weird thing is my eap is still labeled as "managed by other". I then try to adopt and it says my log in info is inccorect. I try to access the eap directly through the browser and it also says log in is incorrect. The eap is still broadcasting my network (so it hasnt reset) but i noticed it has changed back to dhcp assigned instead of the static address I gave it. Bizarre; only option i see here is to factory reset the eap225.

thanks

@PBGBBB2020 

You will likely need to factory reset it yes, as this is such a large upgrade it wont identify the other controller version.

Reset it and re-adopt.  Hopefully should work ok for you

@Philbert 

Thanks for all the help; a reset and re-adopt did it. Speeds are still so so. One minute I can get the expected through put, the next it drops and can only do about 20mbps, even two feet away from the AP. Maybe something is wrong with the 5ghz band on this AP?? I am going to reach out to tech support again tomorrow.

Side note: I have the one AP up and running with the correct SDN now. Will the controller do anything to optimize the one AP? Or does its utility not really come until you have multiple AP together?

Thanks for all the help.

@PBGBBB2020 

Yes the controller will automatically do channel selection and scanning, DFS avoidance etc with only one AP

In relation to your speed tests, how are you testing this and can you provide some screenshots?    I would recommend strongly against using online speed tests for this as they are notorious for causing false positives, if you are testing WiFi speeds the only reliable and accepted way to do this is via iperf3 tests.

@Philbert 

For the controller to optimize AP parameters, do I need to enable a setting or is jsut leaving frequency on Auto enough? If I take it off auto and choose channel 1, will the SDN ever overide that choice? 

For speed tests, I am using a iperf3, speedtest.net and googles online speed test. It looks like they all tend to get a similar result when they stink and when they are running well. Every so often the iperf peforms decent when the internet tests stink but more times then not, they all are in agreement. 

So I did another reboot this morning and it seems to be doing okay for now. I expect it will drop off again at some point but here are the test results. I am running on my surface pro 7 in the room directly below the AP. 

Google Speed Test:

@Philbert 

here are two tests run right next to the AP:

Link speed was 866/866 in all the tests run. I;d be happy if I could maintain these speeds; its just annoying when it drops back to <20mbps and struggles, which seems to happen randomly but consistently.

Dont judge me for this lazy plot, but here is a trace of my last fifty download results on speedtest.net. The tests date back to Jan 5, 2021. The new AP was install the last week of december.