Node connecting to "wrong" wifi router

[phantomtides]

Hey, kids. I have two Node 2's in my house. One is on the ground floor; one is on the third floor.

I also have an Orbi wireless router on the ground floor, and a satellite on the third floor. The system is awesome; since getting the Orbis over a year ago I've had ZERO problems with devices being able to connect, or with the Orbi failing to distribute clean signal around the house.

Except with the Nodes.

Both Nodes have clear lines-of-sight to the Orbis, about two feet and eight feet. Both display "Excellent" connections, often in the neighborhood of -30 to -35dB of noise, when connected to their Orbi neighbors.

However, nearly every day, I find at least one of the Nodes has reconnected to the "wrong" router — the ground floor Node connects to the satellite on the third floor, or, more often, the Node on the third floor connects to the router downstairs. Neither the Node nor the Orbi has been rebooted, so I cannot fathom why this happens. The way to fix it is to reboot the offending Node, but that's annoying and irrational — sometimes the connection is so weak that the Node has to be rebooted by cycling power (i.e., unplugging), which can involve moving two floors to do so. Even if I can do it through the app, this is obviously not how the Nodes should behave.

Anybody have any experience? Am I missing some setting that would prevent this? Is there a way to stop the Node from being so "dumb"?

Many thanks, fellas and gals.

[TonyW]

Hi Phantomtides...

Help, Send Support Request or support@bluos.net and we would be happy to help...

[phantomtides]

Thanks, will do. Thought I'd post here in case it affected anybody else.

[phantomtides]

Just FYI, I've been round a few times with the BlueSound folks, and while they've been kind and clearly seek to be helpful, the problem persists with no solution offered outside one they acknowledge is impractical.

I know I'm just one guy, but it's frustrating that BlueSound chases new features before allocating more resources to things that are actually broken. If anybody else has any solutions, I'm all ears (eyes?).

[Stelvio]

Just FYI, I've been round a few times with the BlueSound folks, and while they've been kind and clearly seek to be helpful, the problem persists with no solution offered outside one they acknowledge is impractical.
I know I'm just one guy, but it's frustrating that BlueSound chases new features before allocating more resources to things that are actually broken. If anybody else has any solutions, I'm all ears (eyes?).

I had something similar where control issues I was having were initially suggested to be due to poor signal of ~ -85db in the diagnosis on my Powernode2 (it turned out to be nothing to do with signal btw). This caused me to do a bunch of diagnosis of my network as the Powernode was <10 metres line of sight away from the shed AP. I *think* it might have been connecting to the house AP at the time, rather than the closer one in the shed.

In the end I was able to block the MAC address of each player from connecting to the 'wrong' AP, I did this using the open DDWRT firmware I run on my cheap and cheerful TPLink routers (running as wired AP's, no router function). Do you have this ability with the Orbi? If so, just block the mac address of your upstairs Node from connecting to the downstairs Orbi and vice versa. If the stock firmware does not allow it, perhaps you can run DDWRT or similar on the Orbis?

[Stelvio]

BTW, replying this reminded me that I hadn't updated things again since I put the Powernode back to Wifi (from ethernet) since proving it wasn't reception issues causing my control problem. It seems that ethernet MAC address and Wifi MAC addresses are different, if you're connecting via wifi then blocking the MAC address on the bottom of the speaker won't work. Unfortunately the wifi mac address is not immediately obvious but if you go Diagnostics > More it is shown in the wlan0 line. You can also find it by logging into your router and searching devices attached to its wifi.

On the weekend I had pulled the ethernet cable out and restarted the Powernode and sure enough it came up with excellent signal, -49db or so. But checking it again tonight it was back to around -85db and sure enough it had changed itself onto the (much weaker) house AP. Sounds exactly the same as yours, and seems like a bug to me. Expect it to be the fault of the network though....

The MAC address blocking is a hardball way to deal with recalcitrant devices, it prevents them from doing dumb things. Downside is if you intend to pick up the player and walk into the zone of the other AP, then it can't change smoothly over to the better signal as every other device can/does. But if you're using Nodes then I expect they are static and it should work well.

[Afullmark]

I have a Plume Wifi system and, yes, the power node and nodes that I have do this all the time. With mesh wifi systems, this is a real problem.

[SeppiE]

The incredibly powerful Ubiquit devices have this issue like other mesh devices but you can at least reduce the power levels and reject devices connecting to an acess point whose signal is below a definded level.

Plume has just been launched tied in with an ISP here in the UK, its a system that is of great interest to me with the features and aesthetics. The cost in the USA is amazing so hopefully when they start selling direct in the UK the pricing will be similar. A Pod is cheap enough to plugin next to any Bluesound equipment and use the Ethernet port

[phantomtides]

In the end I was able to block the MAC address of each player from connecting to the 'wrong' AP, I did this using the open DDWRT firmware I run on my cheap and cheerful TPLink routers (running as wired AP's, no router function). Do you have this ability with the Orbi? If so, just block the mac address of your upstairs Node from connecting to the downstairs Orbi and vice versa. If the stock firmware does not allow it, perhaps you can run DDWRT or similar on the Orbis?

That's brilliant; I'm not sure why I didn't think of it. BUT...

Though I have a fair amount of common sense (I did know that the Ethernet and the Wifi MAC address of any device are not the same) — I'm not as network-literate as you are, and I can't find an obvious way to block a MAC address from connecting to a specific Orbi device — only from the network as a whole.

The Nodes are <1m and about 3m from the two Orbis and have clear lines-of-sight. When they're connected properly, the system functions flawlessly. But then they seem to switch of their own volition — no power cycled and obviously no other devices demonstrate this galling misbehavior. (The Apple TV near Orbi 1 stays connected to Orbi 1, etc.)

One obvious solution would be to hard-cable them to the Orbis, which behave like like a mesh system but are really just point-to-point routers with great reliability. Cabling one of them wouldn't be a big deal, but the one I use more frequently is trickier. Maybe it would discourage the other, however? Haha... they're behaving like fickle little buggers, maybe try treating them that way?

[Stelvio]

Though I have a fair amount of common sense (I did know that the Ethernet and the Wifi MAC address of any device are not the same) — I'm not as network-literate as you are, and I can't find an obvious way to block a MAC address from connecting to a specific Orbi device — only from the network as a whole.

I wouldn't call myself network literate... I just keep hacking till it works. The problem for you at a guess is that the Orbi is the type of high cost / low maintenance device where the manufacturer has put a large amount of effort in so that you don't have to. You plug it in and it just works, but you likely have little to no customisation control over it (my assumption). My open source devices are the opposite, they take some setting up but you can control every part of them. Like Apple vs Linux I guess.

Sadly this solution likely won't work for you then, this problem really needs to be fixed properly.