Comet Pro reconnects Wi-Fi every 25 s when the gateway doesn't answer ping

KVM
1

My Comet Pro (GL-RM10, V1.10.0 release4) is on eduroam over 5 GHz Wi-Fi (WPA2-Enterprise, PEAP/MSCHAPv2). It drops off the network every 25 seconds or so, which kills Tailscale, SSH and the web UI each time. Signal is fine (around -59 dBm, SNR 33), EAP and DHCP succeed, and the internet works between drops.

The cause is the connectivity check in /usr/bin/repeater. It pings the default gateway, and after 5 failures it takes wlan0 down and reconnects. This network filters ICMP to the gateway, so the check can never pass:

# ping -c 3 -W 1 172.29.144.1
From 10.128.128.128 icmp_seq=1 Packet filtered
...
# ping -c 3 -W 1 8.8.8.8
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss
# ip neigh show 172.29.144.1
172.29.144.1 dev wlan0 lladdr cc:03:d9:xx:xx:xx REACHABLE

The log loops like this for as long as the device is up:

01:07:19 repeater: ping gateway 172.29.144.1 unreachable after 5 attempts
01:07:25 repeater: Attempting to reconnect to: eduroam e2:55:2d:xx:xx:xx 802.1X -58
01:07:25 repeater: wlan0 lost IP: 172.29.153.75
01:07:31 repeater: Successfully reconnected to ssid: eduroam ch: 149 signal: -62 snr: 30
01:07:47 repeater: ping gateway 172.29.144.1 unreachable after 5 attempts
01:07:53 repeater: Attempting to reconnect to: eduroam 0e:8d:cb:xx:xx:xx 802.1X -59

I can't stop repeater as a workaround because gl_kvm_monitor restarts it.

Plenty of campus and hotel networks block ping to the gateway, so the check should fall back to something else before reconnecting, such as ARP state, a public IP, DNS, or connman's online check. An option to turn the check off would also help. I can send full logs or test a beta.

2

You can stop the repeater and rename the repeater process (e.g. repeater1) as a temporary solution.

4

Thanks, I'll try that. Can you include a fix for this in a future firmware update?

Btw this problem also stops the network time from syncing. Every reconnect restarts S49ntp, which kills the ntpdate that's in progress, so the clock never gets set and the device stays about four weeks behind. As fallbacks, it would help to have an option in the UI to set the time manually and a setting for a custom NTP server.

5

@Thalia @wna

6

Hi, thanks for the feedback. We'll evaluate this feature in future updates.

7

Thank you! Latest firmware V1.10.1 release2 fixed it.