Wifi Connecting error

[Hoggorm]

Hi,

I have this new ASUS router that my BCD536HP will not connect to. It can find the 2.4GHz SSID, I enter the password and the following message appears:

Connecting to network. Please wait

After some time, the scanner returns with the message: Connecting error

Now since this was not a problem with the previous router I had, I do indeed suspect that this might be the router and not the 536HP, however I would be happy if you had any suggestions for me to try.

I've tried to change the Wi-Fi channel a few times, I've tried to change the bandwidth form 20/40 to both 40 and 20 MHz and I've tried both Legacy, Auto and N only modes.

I do not see much I can do on the scanner side though...

 

[kd2pm]

Someone else in the forums had a similar problem the other day as well. If the 536 can see the SSID and you have the proper password loaded and it wont connect, make sure the ASUS is set up for WPA/WPA2 and TKIP/AES. That should make the router more compatible with the scanner. I dont believe from what I have seen so far that the 536 works 100% using only WPA2 and AES which is more secure. You might even have to use the less secure WPA/TKIP mode if thats all the 536 can talk.

 

[Hoggorm]

Thank you.


There is not much I can do in changing the encryption on the router.

This is what I can choose:

Authentication Method - Open System, WPA2-Personal, WPA-Auto-Personal, WPA2-Enterprise, WPA-Auto-Enterprise

I did try both WPA2-Personal and WPA-Auto Personal but it did not change anything. Now I call my 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi Hoggorm2.4. On my other router it was just called Hoggorm, so I tried to change the SSID to the same and would you know it connected!

The joy lasted only so long unfortunately because the radio was disconnected again after about an hour. Trying to reconnect was unsuccessful...

I've tried various solutions throughout the day with less than optimal results. As of now it is connected, but I cannot hear anything using the Siren iPhone App so what’s the point really...

Tomorrow I'll travel to work and be away for a week, so I can't test further until I'm back. In the meantime, I have a few suspects to what might be causing the issue and that I will investigate further when I get back home.

The radio requires an SSID with only letters?
The password should only contain letters (possibly upper case?)?
Is there a maximum length of passwords?
Is another device connected to the same SSID interfering the 536?
Channel bandwidth should be 20 MHz only?
Control Channel should be fixed?
Wireless Mode: Auto, N only or Legacy?
Has Group Key Rotation Interval something to do with the issue?
What should Protected Management Frames be set to? Disable, Capable or Required?
Lots of other settings in the Professional tab of the router that could impact the radio?

If you have some further suggestions to try out when I'm back please let me know!

 

[Ubbe]

All routers have a log. Set that to detailed mode and try to connect and then read the log.

/Ubbe

 

[kd2pm]

What did you use for encryption? Typically WPA/TKIP and WPA2/AES are the common combinations. Some routers will allow you to use either or for backwards compatibility. Are you using DHCP to have the 536 get an IP address from the router or did you set it up static? When setting it up static, of course you need to provide it an IP outside the dhcp range as to not cause any IP conflicts. You would also need to provide it a mask of 255.255.255.0 and lastly the gateway should be the IP of the router (typically 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1)

 

[Hoggorm]

All routers have a log. Set that to detailed mode and try to connect and then read the log.

/Ubbe

Tack! I'll check this when I get back home.

What did you use for encryption? Typically WPA/TKIP and WPA2/AES are the common combinations. Some routers will allow you to use either or for backwards compatibility.

I tried both Open System, WPA2-Personal and WPA-Auto-Personal encryption. WPA2-Personal only offers AES, while WPA-Auto-Personal offers AES and AES+TKIP

This is an ASUS GT-AC5300 router.

Are you using DHCP to have the 536 get an IP address from the router or did you set it up static? When setting it up static, of course you need to provide it an IP outside the dhcp range as to not cause any IP conflicts. You would also need to provide it a mask of 255.255.255.0 and lastly the gateway should be the IP of the router (typically 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1)

I would not know... I've not done anything intentional here. In the connected client list (when connected) the 536HP appears with DHCP - Automatic IP. In the LAN IP settings the IP address is 192.168.1.1 and Subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 if that tells you anything?

 

[kd2pm]

The other thought with the router parameters is whether its set to allow B-G-N on 2.4

I dont have all the specs on the 536 so I dont know if it can do 802.11n or not. So make sure the router is not set to just "N" only. I dont believe the 536 does 5ghz so that may not be an issue in your case. Let me see if I can do some additional checking on the 536 and maybe I will have some more ideas.

 

[kd2pm]

In looking at the docs for the 536 and the 5300 it should be pretty straight forward. The 5300 should be set to WPA with TKIP or WPA2 with AES. The 536 should be set to infrastructure and once you enter the SSID and password, it should connect. Also let us know if you have the 5300 wireless mode set to AUTO, N-ONLY or LEGACY. I am not sure that the 536 can do 802.11n so you may have to try auto or legacy.

 

[nr2d]

I had problems with 2 different Asus routers and my 2 BCD536s connecting reliability. I also had other problems with the Asus routers so I went to a Netgear router and haven't had any problems since. I have had to setup any static IPs or anything. I tried most of the suggestions above including updating the firmware on the Asus routers and just gave up.

 

[Hoggorm]

The 5300 should be set to WPA with TKIP or WPA2 with AES. The 536 should be set to infrastructure and once you enter the SSID and password, it should connect. Also let us know if you have the 5300 wireless mode set to AUTO, N-ONLY or LEGACY. I am not sure that the 536 can do 802.11n so you may have to try auto or legacy.

The router is set to WPA2 with AES. I have issues with another computer not compatible with N-only, so I've only tested with Auto and Legacy. The 536 is not able to connect to the 5 GHz band. At least I am not able to see any 5 GHz SSIDs when searching. I have a network device monitor at home and it reported that the 536 went offline on Friday. So it was connected for about two-three days before it was thrown off-line. I am unable to reconnect it until Wednesday when I get back home.

I had problems with 2 different Asus routers and my 2 BCD536s connecting reliability. I also had other problems with the Asus routers so I went to a Netgear router and haven't had any problems since.

I see... As far as I have understood, the Asus routers should be fairly good, but it might of course be the root to this issue! Any other devices I have however have no problems connecting to it.

 

[kd2pm]

One other thing I have heard of but never made much sense to me was that some devices dont like short dhcp leases. So not sure how you have your lease time set up for. For a home system you can go 7 or even 30 days between lease renewal. If the dhcp lease time is too short, some devices may not renew correctly and could drop off the network. I personally have my router set for 30 days. No need to release them quickly since I dont have a problem at home with the pool of IP's in the dhcp range and dont need devices to release them as often.

 

[Hoggorm]

In the DHCP Server settings I find Lease time 86400. I assume this is seconds and then it would sum up to 24 hours. I've never visited this part of the settings before but I see that there is a static IP option (Manually Assigned IP around the DHCP list (Max Limit : 64) ). Would it be advised to try to put the 536HP on this list and assign it a static IP

 

[kd2pm]

If you can assign a static ip to the 536 outside the dhcp range and its doable within the 536 to give it a static ip, thats one option to try. But you need to make sure you dont assign an IP to the 536 thats within the range of DHCP IP's. Many routers will take the whole subnet of .2 through .254 and make it part of the DHCP range. That leaves NO room for static IP's. So you would have to change the DHCP range to say something like .100 through .254 so that leaves .2 through .99 for use as static IP's (assuming your router is using .1 for itself)

I wasnt aware the 536 had the capability to be either auto dhcp or manual where you could enter your own IP, I just thought it was auto dhcp.

Lease time of 1 day is not all that bad. But you noted that it was connected for a while then it disconnected and wouldnt re-connect. That seems strange.

 

[phask]

I've had mine assigned a static IP through the router since Day1. I thought it was ONLY DHCP.

I keep mine static so Proscan or other programs use the same address.

 

[noaim]

If you can assign a static ip to the 536 outside the dhcp range and its doable within the 536 to give it a static ip, thats one option to try. But you need to make sure you dont assign an IP to the 536 thats within the range of DHCP IP's. Many routers will take the whole subnet of .2 through .254 and make it part of the DHCP range. That leaves NO room for static IP's. So you would have to change the DHCP range to say something like .100 through .254 so that leaves .2 through .99 for use as static IP's (assuming your router is using .1 for itself)

I wasnt aware the 536 had the capability to be either auto dhcp or manual where you could enter your own IP, I just thought it was auto dhcp.

Lease time of 1 day is not all that bad. But you noted that it was connected for a while then it disconnected and wouldnt re-connect. That seems strange.

Most newer routers will not assign an ip that is already set to static inside the router the only time I usually see that happen is if you assign a static on the device itself and not the router static table


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

[Hoggorm]

I'm back home and have now adjusted the router settings:

IP Pool Starting Address is now: 192.168.1.40
IP Pool Ending Address is now: 192.168.1.254

I've assigned the 536HP a static IP of 192.168.1.10

After resetting the radios Wi-Fi to factory, I search for, and find, my SSID in the 2.4 GHz band. Entering the password shows the message connected and the small "fan" icon in the upper right part of the display is visible. The scanner is now connected to my router and given the IP of 192.168.1.10

The Siren app will connect to the radio. For a few minutes it is working fine, even though some audio is dropped. Then, after restarting the app no information at all is displayed. See Attached screenshot. No audio is heard either.



Just for testing purposes I turn off the radio and back on. The Wi-Fi fan symbol in the upper right corner do not reappear. In the Wi-Fi settings of the radio the menu Show Wi-Fi Information say Wi-Fi busy. After some time, it will say Wi-Fi is not connected.

As far as I can see this behavior is the same as what happened when I was not using a static IP for the 536.

 

[Ubbe]

If you have an Android phone or tablet, download the free and excellent WiFi Analyzer by Kevin Yuan and use that to check if you have another WiFi transmitter on your frequency that interferes. It seems that most of my neighbours use some sort of WiFi routers that automaticly changes channels so that somedays there's a lot on my frequency and some of my WiFi cameras then dies and the next day I'm all alone on my channel.

/Ubbe

 

[kd2pm]

I 2nd Ubbe's suggestion. Its possible that your router is on the same channel as someone else. Since your 536 will connect and will stay connected for some period of time...that makes it sound like you have everything set up correctly. Typically (in the US) 2.4 channels 1, 6 and 11 are the most common since they have no overlap. You should scan around to see if someone else is on the same channel as you.

 

[Hoggorm]

The Asus router do have a built in Wi-Fi analyzer and I am aware of the issue with several routers transmitting on the same channel. I am currently on channel 11 and it is not very crowded at all.

I have however hopefully identified the root of this issue! I'm still crossing my fingers but it looks very promising so far. To my router I have connected a device called Fingbox. This is a device that "lets me secure and troubleshoot my network from anywhere" During my investigation in another issue I see that several people have experienced issues with their network after connecting such a Fingbox. Although I was not really believing it could be the cause of this issue since I see no other problems with my network the Fingbox has been a small suspect.

I disconnected it on Thursday and the 536HP has been working without issues since. I can connect to the 2.4 GHz band, turn off the radio and back on again and then it reappears on the net within 20 seconds. I can use the Siren App and it works every single time. I've tried to restart the 536HP three-four times since Thursday to try to provoke the problem to reappear but it comes online again every time. My current conclusion is that the Fingbox was somehow denying the 536 access to the router.

Looking through the log from the router I can only find one event since Thursday where the 536 appears to have been offline without me turning it off. I did not notice when it happened though. The 536HP has the MAC address FC:4D:xx:E2:xx:72. As you can see in the log below something happened at 23:07:23 yesterday that made the 536 (and another device) re-associate to the network at 23:07:28 (Jan 11 23:07:28 : eth6: ReAssoc FC:4D:xx:E2:xx:72)
It was then disconnected at 23:07:29 (Jan 11 23:07:29 WLCEVENTD: eth6: Disassoc FC:4D:xx:E2:xx:72)
And then finally reconnected just over 30 seconds later at 23:08:02 (Jan 11 23:08:02 WLCEVENTD: eth6: Assoc FC:4D:xx:E2:xx:72)
In the same timespan several disconnects and connections occurred. Again, I can't really say that I noticed any internet outage at this time.

Maybe you can identify what happened?

Jan 11 23:07:23 rc_service: cfg_server 6877:notify_rc restart_wireless
Jan 11 23:07:23 kernel: bond0: the permanent HWaddr of eth3 - 04:xxxx:b0 - is still in use by bond0 - set the HWaddr of eth3 to a different address to avoid conflicts
Jan 11 23:07:24 kernel: ubi1: attaching mtd9
Jan 11 23:07:24 kernel: ubi1: scanning is finished
Jan 11 23:07:24 kernel: ubi1: attached mtd9 (name "misc1", size 8 MiB)
Jan 11 23:07:24 kernel: ubi1: PEB size: 131072 bytes (128 KiB), LEB size: 126976 bytes
Jan 11 23:07:24 kernel: ubi1: min./max. I/O unit sizes: 2048/2048, sub-page size 2048
Jan 11 23:07:24 kernel: ubi1: VID header offset: 2048 (aligned 2048), data offset: 4096
Jan 11 23:07:24 kernel: ubi1: good PEBs: 64, bad PEBs: 0, corrupted PEBs: 0
Jan 11 23:07:24 kernel: ubi1: user volume: 1, internal volumes: 1, max. volumes count: 128
Jan 11 23:07:24 kernel: ubi1: max/mean erase counter: 25/13, WL threshold: 4096, image sequence number: 1984005520
Jan 11 23:07:24 kernel: ubi1: available PEBs: 0, total reserved PEBs: 64, PEBs reserved for bad PEB handling: 4
Jan 11 23:07:24 kernel: ubi1: background thread "ubi_bgt1d" started, PID 19457
Jan 11 23:07:25 kernel: UBIFS (ubi1:0): UBIFS: mounted UBI device 1, volume 0, name "nvram", R/O mode
Jan 11 23:07:25 kernel: UBIFS (ubi1:0): LEB size: 126976 bytes (124 KiB), min./max. I/O unit sizes: 2048 bytes/2048 bytes
Jan 11 23:07:25 kernel: UBIFS (ubi1:0): FS size: 5840896 bytes (5 MiB, 46 LEBs), journal size 1015809 bytes (0 MiB, 6 LEBs)
Jan 11 23:07:25 kernel: UBIFS (ubi1:0): reserved for root: 275879 bytes (269 KiB)
Jan 11 23:07:25 kernel: UBIFS (ubi1:0): media format: w4/r0 (latest is w4/r0), UUID 769A777B-8225-4D5C-B218-B0692093C488, small LPT model
Jan 11 23:07:25 kernel: UBIFS (ubi1:0): un-mount UBI device 1
Jan 11 23:07:25 kernel: ubi1: detaching mtd9
Jan 11 23:07:25 kernel: ubi1: mtd9 is detached
Jan 11 23:07:27 kernel: Bonding Port enabled mask 0x000c
Jan 11 23:07:27 kernel: NOTE: Using Port Grouping for IMP ports : [ 0 --> 4 ] [ 1 --> 5 ] [ 2, 3, 7 --> 8 ]
Jan 11 23:07:28 : eth6: Assoc FC:xxxx:4A
Jan 11 23:07:28 : eth6: ReAssoc FC:4D:xx:E2:xx:72
Jan 11 23:07:28 : eth6: ReAssoc 00:xxxx:C1
Jan 11 23:07:28 : eth6: Assoc B8:xxxx:69
Jan 11 23:07:28 : eth8: Assoc F4:xxxx:80
Jan 11 23:07:29 WLCEVENTD: eth6: Disassoc FC:4D:xx:E2:xx:72
Jan 11 23:07:29 WLCEVENTD: eth6: Assoc F4:xxxx:A5
Jan 11 23:07:30 WLCEVENTD: eth8: Assoc D0:xxxx:BE
Jan 11 23:07:30 WLCEVENTD: eth6: Assoc F0:xxxx:4B
Jan 11 23:07:30 WLCEVENTD: eth6: Assoc 14:xxxx:65
Jan 11 23:07:31 WLCEVENTD: eth8: Assoc A0:xxxxD
Jan 11 23:07:32 WLCEVENTD: eth8: Assoc 9C:xxxx:3D
Jan 11 23:07:34 WLCEVENTD: eth8: Disassoc F4:xxxx:80
Jan 11 23:07:37 WLCEVENTD: eth6: Assoc B8:xxxx:69
Jan 11 23:07:39 WLCEVENTD: eth6: Assoc A4:xxxx:7F
Jan 11 23:07:39 WLCEVENTD: eth6: Assoc 74:xxxx:C6
Jan 11 23:07:45 WLCEVENTD: eth6: Disassoc A4:xxxx:7F
Jan 11 23:07:45 WLCEVENTD: eth6: Disassoc 74:xxxx:C6
Jan 11 23:07:46 WLCEVENTD: wl0.1: Assoc F4:xxxx:80
Jan 11 23:08:02 WLCEVENTD: eth6: Assoc FC:4D:xx:E2:xx:72
Jan 11 23:08:30 WLCEVENTD: eth7: Assoc 00:xxxx:96
Jan 11 23:08:38 WLCEVENTD: eth7: Assoc 00:xxxx:7A
Jan 11 23:08:38 WLCEVENTD: eth7: Assoc 00:xxxx:72
Jan 11 23:08:46 WLCEVENTD: eth7: Assoc 74:xxxx:C6
Jan 11 23:08:48 WLCEVENTD: eth7: Assoc 00:xxxx:72

 

[kd2pm]

Well it sounds like you are on to something here with the fingbox. I use the app to scan my network on my phone but really dont have much knowledge about the other product. Just like antivirus software...some of them actually cause more havoc than others. I tried to use mcafee and others and have found that they actually prevent me from getting on my network correctly since they block way too much stuff. As for the disconnects and connects...I cant answer that one. Normally any re-keys or lease renewals wont impact the device. My Mikrotik router sometimes shows numerous assoc/dis-assoc in a matter of seconds...So I wonder if that may be collisions on the WLAN with other devices. You may want to check the signal levels of your WLAN devices. Having a good enough RSSI that overcomes the noise floor is important as well. Not sure how far away your 536 is from our router...