I recently obtained the MT300N-V2. It arrived with v2 firmware, and I promptly upgraded it to v3.012. It’s a very nice little product. It works fine at home - I was able to connect my iPhone to its WiFi, scan for local WiFi networks (there are about a dozen nearby), select one of mine, and join it. Everything worked as expected.
On the weekend, I traveled to Toronto and stayed in a downtown hotel - the Kimpton, which is part of the large IHG chain (Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, etc). Unfortunately, the MT300N did not work as expected. When scanning, it was unable to find the hotel’s WiFi networks. In fact, it failed to find many of the WiFi networks that were nearby. It’s behavior was very odd.
Using my iPhone, I scanned the WiFi environment, and it found lots of nearby networks. Some of them were 5GHz radios which the MT300N will not see. However, many were 2.4GHz radios. The hotel networks provided for guest access are Kimpton and IHG Connect. My IPhone was able to see both of them, and join them. But not the MT300N. The first time I clicked Scan, this is what it found:
AYAD, BELL515, Kimpton_Meeting.
I clicked SCAN again:
BELL515, Kimpton_Meeting, Rosenman
And again:
BELL515, Dolphins-284, Kimpton_Meeting
And again:
Daheim, Kimpton_Meeting, Rosenman
And again:
BELL515, Dolphins-284, Kimpton_Meeting, Rosenman, SUPER_SAIYAN
Every time I clicked Scan, a different set of networks would appear.
But what never appeared were the two hotel networks available for guests to join: Kimpton and IHG Connect .
My iPhone indicated that those two networks were unlocked and both had a solid 3-bar signal, stronger than the various networks that the MT-300N did find.
I had my MacBook Pro with me in the hotel. It is equipped with a WiFi scanner application which I used to scan the local WiFi environment. There were a great many 2.4GHz radios visible, well over a dozen. Like many large hotels, the Kimpton has many access points installed all over the property. The scanner found multiple instances of Kimpton and IHG Connect base stations, each with different BSSIDs. There were several operating at 2.4GHz and several at 5GHz. The WiFi scanner reveals that the hotel’s network is using Cisco Meraki base stations.
So my question: why does the MT300N not find the Kimpton or IHG Connect networks being broadcast by Meraki base stations? They were both operating on 2.4GHz and had strong signals, stronger than most of the networks that the scan did discover. There seems to be a bug in the GL-INET scanning algorithm that prevents discovery of these hotel networks, and others in the area.
One theory is that the MT300N WiFi driver gets confused when multiple SSIDs are being broadcast by individual Meraki base stations. Looking at the various SSIDs that the MT300N did find, note that Kimpton_Meeting network was always discovered every time it did a scan. This network is not joinable by guests. However, it is being broadcast by the same base stations that are broadcasting the beacons for Kimpton and IHG Connect. Perhaps the MT-300N finds the beacon for Kimpton_Meeting first, then goes down a rathole dealing with the multitude of other beacons coming from the Meraki base stations.