Is there any chance I can get help with the following issue using not-so-technical dialogue? I am not a network engineer and do not read or understand code.
I have an Opal that I use as our travel router. At new destinations I connect the router to the local wifi (sometimes 2.4 and others 5) and then all our clients are good to go, in theory. All very basic and no additional complications. I do use a Surfshark VPN on the router but the following issue is the same with or without.
The connection(s) have been unreliable. Even though the local destination wifi appears uninterrupted, the Opal wifi broadcast drops and clients lose connectivity to the Opal. I have to wait for the Opal broadcast to return to use a client to open to the GLi app to watch it restablish the repeater connection to the destination wifi. The timing of this cycling is not predictable but may have a correlation to data load. Not sure.
I have seen other forum topics discussing unreliable connection issues but not sure is they are the same and cannot follow the resolutions, if any. Any help is appreciated. I will likely have followup questions for technical items.
Well it unfortunately is complicated with SFT1200 OPAL today, with Firmware 4.x
And I could not find a single firmware version that is without major connection or performance issues so far. And each version in the firmware download list has it's own different limitations. That makes it very complicated to handle.
The old version 3.216 (2 years old) is usable.
The others have a list of problems. It is difficult to make a complete and correct list.
So the work-arounds are version dependent and improve the working but are not real fixes. This is a very technical matter.
But in general following things can be done, to avoid the many reconnects.
for the 2.4GHz channel change the mode used in advanced/Luci to "legacy" (SFT1200 does not handle wifi 4 (=n) correctly)
use BSSID lock (this BSSID lock can only be set while making the initial repeater connection) (this prevents SFT1200 roaming to other APs with the same wifi SSID name)
only have one known network (prevents SFT1200 to jump to other known networks)
set multiwan tracking to disabled (prevents the SFT1200 to drop the connection if that test incidently fails)
for 5GHz no AP should use a DFS channel (36-40-44-48 are non-DFS) with the same SSID name (most FW versions do not connect to DFS channels)
verify the wifi transmit power and distance of the OPAL (most version have a very strong signal, some versions are very weak). Too strong is worse than too weak.
Are these suggestions all for the Opal wifi reception settings (not broadcast)? I ask because we just moved to a new location and hard wired the Opal into the local router. So currently not using the Wifi repeater. I have still noticed a couple of the same cycling issues even without using the wifi receiving end of the system.
I will look through the admin panel for the items you suggest but appreciate any direction on locations.
Using a hardwired uplink is must easier than the WISP mode (using wifi as uplink)
Some problems of WISP mode will also be there in the wired setup, because wifi is alwaysbi-directional, even if using it only for download or only for upload. Unicast Packets must be acknowledged.
Using the OPAL as local router will in most cases have the OPAL wifi in transmit direction (we normally download more than we upload), so the experience will not be as bad as the repeater/extender/WISP router usage.
And the OPAL as wifi AP (not client) will just never select DFS channels and can define some of the wifi parameters to be used by the clients. As AP It has no "roaming" task like a wifi client device does. It's own internet uplink should be very stable (wired), so less Multiwan actions (hotplug) that do reset firewall and routing table entries.
Only it's pure wifi working could be disturbing. And for some versions there is some problem, like the very weak signal of version "openwrt-sft1200-4.7.2-1227-1735237824" (which has already been removed from the download site)