AXT1800: after a while, wifi connection still active but no data flowing till reconnecting

gled · 2022-09-14T17:29:15.102Z

Hi guys,

I have an issue with my AXT1800, which has been persistent since 4.0.2 up to beta 4.1 version of the firmware.

After a while being connected to the router ( sometimes 6-8h sometimes a bit less, sometimes more ), the wifi connection is still active and connected but no packets are flowing at all, everything is lost ( ping routerip indicates 100% packet loss ).

Reconnecting to the wifi immediately solves the issue 100% of the time ( Turn off wifi on the computer, turn it back on ). Other routers I have tested do not have this issue.

Issue appears with repeater mode or when using an ethernet WAN uplink or also when using a tethered upstream link.

No specific features are being used on the router apart one vpn ( either ovpn or wireguard ) but Issue has been reproduced also without the VPN.

I am kind of at a loss on what to investigate to fix that, any ideas or is it a known bug I have not found while researching for it ?

yuxin.zou · 2022-09-15T03:24:48.407Z

Please try to select Wi-Fi Mode without ax (5GHz: 11a/n/ac, 2.4GHz: 11b/g/n). And see if the problem still occurs?

In addition, are you able to provide a log of when the problem occurred?

gled · 2022-09-15T13:32:19.325Z

Trying now, thank you for a clue !

gled · 2022-09-23T02:38:12.441Z

So I can confirm that disabling ax seems to solve the issue.

I wonder if it’s something that can be fixed on the software side ?

yuxin.zou · 2022-09-23T02:50:16.584Z

This is a problem between the client and the router. Theoretically 11a/n/ac/ax mode is backward compatible, and clients that do not support ax should negotiate to use a/n/ac mode. However, some clients that don’t support ax may still use ax mode, thus causing compatibility issues.
Reserving a mode without ax is the current solution.

jgutman · 2022-09-23T05:44:22.118Z

This sounds suspiciously like the problem I was having at a hotel a few weeks ago. We all ended up by thinking it was a problem with the hotels captive portal, but your description of the problem sounds exactly like what I was experiencing, and the wifi generated by the Slate was using ax for both 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz… Unfortunately I’m not at that hotel anymore. In any case, I’ve also change the Slate wifi to not use ax. I’ll check it out on my next trip later this week.

gled · 2022-09-23T17:09:19.588Z

that is interesting, thank you for the explanation.

What is weird is the client which has the issue is a

0000:00:14.3 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX201 (rev 20)
It does support ax mode according to the specs.

Could it be that another client is connected which does not support ax mode and create issues for that one ax client ?

yuxin.zou · 2022-09-24T03:45:53.190Z

gled:

Could it be that another client is connected which does not support ax mode and create issues for that one ax client ?

Maybe. Were there any other clients present at the time of the failure? If you need ax, you can try switching to ax mode and not connecting other devices.

gled:

Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 6 AX201 (rev 20)

We’ll analyse it to see if there are compatibility issues.