@David-TP 

Hello,

I had a perfect network with three Deco PX50 units connected via a fiber cable. The network ran for several months without any need for a restart, and everything – including the IoT network – worked like clockwork.

Since we have quite a number of connected devices at home (40–50, including the central smart home unit), I wanted to add a 5G backup to the Deco network. I chose the Deco X50-5G. And that’s when my worst network nightmare began (not to mention that my wife yells at me every day that the latest WiFi update is completely worthless).

I expected to be able to use the 5G backup from the satellite (I have a SIM from T-Mobile) because in the knowledge base it is described as a hybrid mesh... But that didn’t work out – the Deco app on iOS didn’t offer such an option. So, I tried replacing the main PX50 unit with the X50-5G.

At first, with the standard firmware, the IoT network disappeared from the Deco app, although the devices remained connected. Some of them were displayed in the app’s client list, others were not. And overall, the network was not stable at all.

Subsequently, on the recommendation of TP-Link Czech support, I installed beta firmware 1.2.0. That solved the IoT network issue – the devices reconnected. And on the first day after the update, it even looked like the stability problems were resolved.

My setup is as follows: the Deco X50-5G is the main unit, connected via a 500 Mbit fiber link. It also has a T-Mobile SIM installed. This Deco is connected by cable to another Deco PX50, and I configured two additional Deco PX50 units to connect to the cable-connected one. This allowed them to reconnect via both PLC and Wi-Fi.

However, from the second day of this setup, the stability issues started again. The individual PX50 units began randomly disconnecting from PLC, sometimes even from Wi-Fi, and the X50-5G would appear unreachable several times a day. Sometimes, even after multiple restarts, the system would become completely unusable for normal work and calls. For example, yesterday one of the PX50 units – which is connected to the gate control unit – disconnected, and without its connection, the gate simply wouldn’t open. Even after 15 minutes, I couldn’t get it back online and drive to work. Also, some cameras we use as baby monitors in the children’s rooms disconnect several times during a stream with the main X50-5G (i.e. the stream drops).

When I fed the router logs into GPT, it highlighted these problems:

• Network Connectivity Issues:

  • Multiple instances of "connect failed: Network unreachable" (logged by hostapd) indicate that, at times, the network was unable to reach certain endpoints. This could be causing interruptions in client connectivity.

• Script and Configuration Errors:

  • A critical error in the initialization script /etc/rc.d/S16qca-ssdk shows a syntax error ("unexpected "(") on line 178. This suggests that there is faulty scripting which may prevent proper initialization of hardware or network services.
  • Repeated "uci: Entry not found" messages indicate that the UCI configuration is missing expected entries. Missing parameters could lead to misconfigured interfaces, incorrect failover behavior, and general instability in network routing.
  • An error message such as "ifconfig: down: error fetching interface information: Device not found" suggests that certain expected network interfaces are not properly detected or defined.

• IPv6 Configuration Problems:

  • Errors like "can't create /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf//accept_ra: nonexistent directory" (and similar for slaac_addr) point to problems with the IPv6 setup. The presence of a double slash implies that the interface identifier is missing, preventing proper acceptance of router advertisements and SLAAC configuration.
  • These misconfigurations may lead to degraded or completely unavailable IPv6 connectivity, especially in dual-stack environments.

• PLC Backhaul and Interface Mismatches:

  • The logs indicate issues with enabling PLC backhaul: for instance, the message "plc backhaul can not be enable without plc_attached" shows that the system is attempting to initialize PLC functionality despite a missing or misconfigured PLC module.
  • Repeated errors such as "can't find ifname[eth2.1] in eth_ifname" point to misassignments or missing definitions for expected Ethernet interfaces, which could disrupt proper backhaul configuration.

• Logger and Command Line Misconfigurations:

  • There are numerous errors with the use of the logger command (e.g., "logger: unrecognized option: >"), suggesting that the command is being invoked with incorrect syntax. This could lead to incomplete logging, hindering diagnostics.
  • Several messages indicate that commands are not being fully constructed (e.g., "Command line is not complete. Try option 'help'"), which implies that some scripts or system calls are running with incomplete parameters.

• Module Loading and iptables Issues:

  • Errors such as "kmod: module is not loaded" and "/sbin/uci: Invalid argument" indicate that certain kernel modules or configuration tools are failing to load or execute correctly.
  • Additionally, both iptables and ip6tables report errors like "Couldn't load target app_classifier: No such file or directory." This suggests that the firmware is either missing support for the specified target or the configuration for iptables is incomplete.

• General Stability and Initialization Concerns:

  • Several daemons (for example, apsd and awn) report issues during the initialization of network interfaces and backhaul services. These repeated errors contribute to overall instability, particularly during failover events or when switching between the primary (fiber) connection and backup solutions (5G or PLC).

So last night, for the sake of my nerves and my wife’s peace of mind, I replaced the main Deco again with a PX50 and set the X50-5G as a satellite. This way, the network is perfectly stable. However, the Deco app doesn’t offer any backup option. Therefore, I’m likely going to return the X50-5G to the seller as a non-functional and overpriced 5G modem that has created a nightmare in my home network.

Right now, I have the choice between having a network that is unusable but with backup or a network without backup that works absolutely perfectly. Neither option meets my requirements :(.

Does anyone have any idea how to get the satellite backup working? If that were possible, I’d be completely satisfied with this setup.

David-TP wrote

Hi, welcome to the community. It was what I did in the beginning. Later I realized the new firmware progress took longer than I expected. A quick solution to revert to the official 1.1.5/1.1.7 was a necessity. The engineers are still working on an official firmware fix and I will keep the community updated once there is further news.

  @David-TP 

The problem with this response is that I'm not sure if anyone here actually believes at this point that the engineers are actively working on an official fix. There's been no new beta releases for months and people are stuck with unofficial releases.

A much more likely situation is that the engineers updated the X50-5G v1 firmware from the very outdated 1.6.0 firmware platform to the latest 1.12.0 firmware platform, with all the latest features. What they didn't seem to realise, when releasing the new platform, was that the hardware of X50-5G is not sufficient to handle the memory requirements of this new platform version, and all the added daemons running in the background. This, combined with TP-Link 5G modem error handling code clearly being flaky, causes the router getting stuck frequently.

Since we did receive some hotfix betas soon after the release, the engineers probably tried to fix the issue with some small changes, but gave up when those didn't work. My expectation is that they've rather shifted focus to the 1.13.0 firmware platform, optimising it for lower end hardware specs, and are not working on X50-5G specifically any more.

Probably a good call, since the 1.12.0 platform seems quite sloppy work, the focus has clearly been on adding as many features as possible at the expense of performance and stability. I would attribute this to TP-Link's product management, to keep up with competition, rather than engineering though. This is all based on assumptions of course, because actual details aren't getting shared.

What bothers me here, and probably many others, is that you're not being fully transparent of what is happening. All you need to do is to explain what happened, give the community a summary of the post incident report with the 1.2.0 release (hoping you have one), and an estimated timeline for the next release.

We get it that you're just a community/customer support person and don't have decision power when it comes to the product roadmap. You've already shared all known paths for mitigating the issue, but what you can do is share more information on what went wrong and what's the plan and timeline on resolving it fully. If we're truly waiting for the 1.13.0 platform, as I suspect, and it's taking a while, sharing that information would be useful as well.

  @juhovh 

Yes, i have already returned X50-5G for peace of mind.. Bought BE65-5G which works like a charm...

  @David-TP it keeps going down multiple times throughout the day even when used in bridge mode. TP-Link doesn't seem serious in fixing the X50-5G. Been almost a year now.

  @David-TP if this frimeware was open source im sure many issues will be fixed .. i want to use 1.2.0 but the issues with it not worth it , 1.1.5 isn't issue free at least its working

  @David-TP 
I got this thing because i was very interested in the hybrid mesh backup mode.

It would have been nice to have a proper backup for if my isp fails, but without having to swap main deco's when i want to take it with me when on vacation.
 

Even sent an email to tplink asking if that would work with my other deco products (a few x60's and an x50 outdoor) and it would work for what i described above and they confirmed it would.

Reading all of this i guess i should have done my homework a bit more...
But i still tried to get it working anyway. Installed the beta update despite the issues mentioned. But the settings for hybrid mesh backup just aren't showing up in my app.

Has it been disabled completely even in the beta update or is something else wrong?
Waiting on a proper update to get things working would be one thing, but if it turns out it won't be compatible with my x60's or something like that i'd rather know while i can still return it...