I cannot create an AP with any of the higher 5ghz wifi channels with Slate and don’t understand why. Can anybody please explain?
Channel 36-48 works no problems
Channel 52-64 cannot be selected in GL.iNet UI (but can in LuCI). Choosing this channel in LuCI does not make the network visible or accessible however: ‘wireless not associated’.
Channel 100-144 cannot be selected either (because of DFS maybe?.. though the channel option is also available in LuCI). Choosing this channel regardless, LuCI reports that ‘wireless is not associated’ and the network is clearly not visible or accesssible to other devices.
Channel 149-165 can be selected in the GL.iNet UI (not LuCI though) but no devices can see the network or connect to is. Checking in LuCI shows that ‘wifi is not associated’ still and the network is not running at all from this channel.
Therefore only one 80mhz channel (36-48) works!?!
Why have option to select 149-165 in GL.iNet UI if they don’t work at all? Also… if choosing ‘auto’ or ‘optimize channel’ it seems to sometimes choose channels 149-165 which don’t work making ‘auto’ and ‘channel optimization’ feature completely useless.
Please explain what is happening, why and whether this expected.
Are you using repeater? Did you change the country code and what is the country code now?
About DFS channels, there should be another settings to enable (cannot remember and not sure). But once you change to DFS channels the router need one minute to broadcast WiFi signal because it needs to detect surroundings signals.
I did change the country code to GB but had also put it back to US so those channels should have been working. No repeater mode was being used.
I reset the router and tested again and channels 149-161 now work with US region set - even when switching back and forth from GB to US so it must have just been a config bug as I cannot reproduce it. I had reset the settings when updating so who know’s why this could have happened.
However because of this experimentation I now realise that there are some issues with the new firmware.
When changing the country code to GB, the GL.iNet UI no longer reflects the change. Before with 3.025, I could see and select channel 13 in the GL.iNet UI but this is no longer possible. Also, channels 149-161 are shown in GL.iNet UI under GB region but they do not function at all. This also breaks the new channel optimisation feature under GB region for 5ghz.
The GB country code in OpenWRT is not actually up to date with channels that are legally available in europe:
As you can see from above links, in most EU countries channels 149-165 are actually supported with transmit power equal or inferior to 14db (25mw) now, making the defaul 100mw option illegal.
Finding and verifying this information was not that easy because most sources are out of date.
The remaining issue:
Unfortunately in the GL.iNet firmwares, selecting EU zones does not allow these 149-165 channels despite them being legal now. Also the US zone does not allow wifi channels 12-13.
More problematic is the response of the GL.iNet firmware’s UI to zones other than US - not showing the new available options (such as channel 13), or showing options that refuse to work (channels 149-161).
I will have a look at the DFS channels via LuCI (with more patience to wait and see if they work after several minutes). In the mean time, I would very much appreciate if you would consider a more robust option to follow local laws in Europe.
Currently only US laws are properly respected in the GL.iNet firmware.
Changing the advanced LuCI settings to europe options such as GB unfortunately does not fix this as new problems arise doing so since channels 149-161 are broken with this region setting. Also, the GL.iNet UI does not properly reflect working options and the legal channels are out of date.
The only option to use this device legally in EU currently is to set to GB for channels 12-13 or to set to US for channels (149-161) while reducing the transmit power to 14db (25mw). This is obviously not ideal.
Hopefully GL.iNet will be able to follow EU laws properly in future firmwares.
@chromebook
Thank you for your suggestions and feedback. Since we have not completed the DFS certification at present, our firmware does not support setting the DFS channel by default. Prior to 3.025, after you modify the country code of luci, gl-inet web ui can be displayed normally because Our channel list is obtained through iwinfo wlan0 freqlist. In the new version, we are aware of this problem, so we have modified it, and the dfs channel is also related to the firmware of the wifi, so after you set the luci, the wifi cannot be initialized normally.