One Deco never has clients
I recently installed a Deco mesh router, model XE5300 with 3 Decos. The main Deco is in the basement, with a satellite Deco on the ground floor and the second floor of our house. 6Ghz channel is used for backhaul only. Internet is 1 GB fiber. I am getting pretty good connectivity throughout the house, with individual download speeds ranging from 150 mbps to 500 mbps. Here is the issue: the satellite on the ground floor never has any clients connected to it (basement Main Deco has 5 or 6, upstairs has 2 or 3). The ground floor satellite Deco drops out of service from time to time, but reconnects and the Deco app on my phone says "Everything looks good". But it never has any clients despite having a laptop and a television close to it, plus cell phones in use on the main floor.
Should I just ignore this and keep using the service as is, or should I do something about it in hopes of getting better download speed on the ground floor? Do I have a bad Deco unit on the ground floor that needs replacing? I have tried rebooting the system, with the same results afterwards.
Thanks for any help you can give me-
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Please verify whether Fast Roaming is enabled. If it is currently disabled, please enable it.
In the Deco app, navigate to the network tab, select "More," then "Advanced," and locate the "Fast Roaming" option. If it indicates "Disabled," please click on it to enable the feature.
What is Fast Roaming? See below.
"Fast Roaming is a feature that allows your Wi-Fi clients to switch their connection from one AP to another quickly to get stronger Wi-Fi signal, improving your Wi-Fi experience, as well as optimizing the load of each AP by adjusting the number of clients connected to them."
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If you suspect that the Deco unit on the ground floor does not behave well, you could simply swap it with the other satellite Deco.
Sometimes the app does not show correctly where clients are connected. A wifi monitor (wifi analyzer) app on a device will show you the BSSID of the wifi network, which is the MAC address of the Deco.
Does a device on the ground floor connect to the main Deco instead of the satellite Deco on the ground floor? It could be beneficial, as it eliminates one hop for the traffic.
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@Viking1100 Ideally you place the main router connected to your ISP service in a central location and spread out the nodes outward, but in your case your main router is on the bottom floor and you are adding upwards.
As noted you can swap two, and see if the middle one no longer drops out. If dropping stops then potential defective unit, contact TP-Link or exchange with a new set.
If no change then you may need to relocate the unit that is dropping out. I am puzzled as it seems the one in the middle?
If possible make a connection to the ISP the one in the middle. If not then consider the central one the "middle man". Unfortunately it has to make a connection between the basement and 2nd floor units. Therefore twice its bandwidth is used just for back-haul, and there is less available to devices.
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@Viking1100 Does the satellite Deco on the second floor connect to the main Deco or to the other satellite Deco?
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@Viking1100 Thanks for all of the support messages! Fast roaming was off, and I turned it on. After that, I caught one brief moment when a client connected to the ground floor Deco. But 99% of the time only the basement and upstairs Decos have clients. All of the clients on the ground floor connect to the main router Deco in the basement (which I guess is good, one less node). I have not yet tried moving the middle man ground floor Deco to another location - I may try it out in the garage just for kicks.
Ground floor satellite Deco and upstairs satellite Deco both connect to the basement main Deco router (upstairs does not connect to ground floor). So I presume this means I can move the ground floor Deco without degrading the upstairs Deco service, right?
I guess I am not too worried at this point, because the system seems to be working fine as is.
Thanks again for the help!
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I believe, indeed, you can move the ground floor Deco without degrading the upstairs Deco service.
Or even eliminate the ground floor Deco from your mesh, if you do not want to plug the TV into it.
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There is a method available to configure devices to connect to a specific deco, even with fast roaming enabled. This function allows you to designate a particular deco for device
connections, if desired.
To proceed, please access the Deco app and navigate to the Network tab. Next, select "Online Clients."
Identify the device you wish to assign to a specific deco and click on the device.
Next click on "Connection Preference"
Under "Preferred Deco" choose which deco you want your device to connect to
Now hit save at the top right
Repeat the steps above for each device
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