[SOLVED] TP-Link Archer AX50/AX3000 constantly dropping client connections.

[JustSomeNumbers]

Hi there. So as the title says, I'm using a TP-Link Archer AX50/AX3000. Before anyone suggests it, and I apologize for how this sounds but I am just exhausted from being told to do the same thing over and over again, I have already attempted power cycling, updating firmware, rolling back firmware, and two or three factory resets. I have attempted setting the 2.4 and 5ghz bands to consistent frequencies(20/40 for 2.4 and 20/40/80/160 for 5ghz) and channels(1/6/11 for 2.4 and 40/64/128/157 on 5ghz), setting them to 'auto', and both lowering and raising the beacon interval to its minimum and maximum as well as trying the default. None of these things have resolved my problems in the slightest. I did not have any of the below problems with my previous router, an Asus RT-AC66U, but that router does not handle the throughput of my internet well enough and so I replaced it with this one.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, and again I apologize if it sounds, I don't know, snarky or something, let's move on to what's actually happening with my devices. I have two Kasa HS105 smart plugs, an echo dot, and my desktop PC. I have more electronics connected to the router than that but none of them are experiencing these particular issues so I figure we can just leave them out of this.

At least once a day, the echo dot will tell me the HS105 smart plugs have stopped responding. When I look at the IP table on the router's DHCP table, they're still listed as assigned an IP address. When I open the Kasa app on my android phone, which connects to the plugs via the LAN, they are both grayed out and I cannot access them. Sometimes they will reconnect a minute or two later, other times I have had to remove them from the account, reset them, and register them to the account again.

The other problem I'm having is that I game on MUDs(which are text-based games connected via telnet). They only send and receive data to and from the server when there is something to be sent or received. Regardless of the amount of time the connection has been idle, the connection to these servers will drop frequently. Sometimes, if I send data to the server, there will be a 30 second delay and then I will receive a response from the server in the form of a bulk dump of whatever responses I'm supposed to be getting - which suggests to me that the server is still receiving my commands in real-time but the response is being delayed by something along the route back to my PC. Other times, I stop receiving a response altogether and the server disconnects. Either way, it's faster for me to close the client, then re-open it, then reconnect to the server. This is, as you can imagine, -excessively- annoying. Games that maintain constant server connections, like Overwatch, are unaffected by this issue. I have a Plex Media Server running on this PC as well, and it, too, is constantly losing its connection to the internet unless it is constantly sending data. Receiving data alone does not seem to be enough to keep the connection open, for either application.

For reference, in the time it took me to type in the tomshardware address and get to the forums, the connection to the MUD I am on dropped twice while I was actively sending data to the MUD. I have been inactive on it the whole time I have been typing this post, and it has not dropped the connection at all. I have no idea why that is.

Some further information, I am running Windows 10 Pro and the wifi adapter I'm using is a Gigabyte GC-WBAX200 Rev. 10. It's connected to the router at 1.2Gbps according to the 'status' of the wifi adapter. Yes, these issues remain when using an ethernet cable connected to the router. No, TP-Link's tech support has not helped at all.

So, my questions. What else can I do to try to resolve these problems? What might be causing it that I can bring to TP-Link's attention that they could resolve in an upcoming firmware patch? Is there any custom firmware available for this model of router that might offer me more control over it's features? Is anybody even still reading this? Help?

 

[bill001g]

Wifi6 has really only been out barely over 2 months...at least officially. Of course some manufacture build equipment on the proposed standard taking a chance it would not be changed.

This is kinda why I have been waiting for them to work all the bugs out and get this stuff stable. I would be even more wary of third party firmware at this time.

I have been lazy and not studied the details. There is suppose to be some power save option that allows devices save battery. I could see this being a issue if the router thought some device was idle and did something.

You can see if the vendor has a firmware upgrade.

Now all this may not mean anything. First your device are likely 802.11ac so are not using the new features. Maybe ?

Much more important it happens on ethernet which makes things simpler in many ways.

So I will assume the ethernet connection itself is not going to a down or disconnected state. That is generally a hardware thing. Some switches caused it with power save modes.

So working the way up the stack if you issue ARP -a do you see a mapping for the router. If you clear the arp table does it come back. Does just clearing the arp table fix your problem.

Next would be to ping the router IP when this is broken. Most ip issues are related to DHCP timeout and duplicate ip addresses on your network.

If all this works then it is somehow related to traffic going to the internet but not the lan.

 

[JustSomeNumbers]

Wifi6 has really only been out barely over 2 months...at least officially. Of course some manufacture build equipment on the proposed standard taking a chance it would not be changed.

This is kinda why I have been waiting for them to work all the bugs out and get this stuff stable. I would be even more wary of third party firmware at this time.

I have been lazy and not studied the details. There is suppose to be some power save option that allows devices save battery. I could see this being a issue if the router thought some device was idle and did something.

You can see if the vendor has a firmware upgrade.

Now all this may not mean anything. First your device are likely 802.11ac so are not using the new features. Maybe ?

Much more important it happens on ethernet which makes things simpler in many ways.

So I will assume the ethernet connection itself is not going to a down or disconnected state. That is generally a hardware thing. Some switches caused it with power save modes.

So working the way up the stack if you issue ARP -a do you see a mapping for the router. If you clear the arp table does it come back. Does just clearing the arp table fix your problem.

Next would be to ping the router IP when this is broken. Most ip issues are related to DHCP timeout and duplicate ip addresses on your network.

If all this works then it is somehow related to traffic going to the internet but not the lan.

I'm investigating this on the TP-link forums as well and it's been suggested to me that the HS105s losing their connection may be a firmware issue on those devices specifically, and since they are wifi only I think that might be the problem so I'm going to investigate that separately and, for now, assume it is not an issue with the router causing their instability. For posterity I was given this link https://community.tp-link.com/us/home/forum/topic/151719 though it appears I have a later firmware version on them so I am uncertain what to do about it at this point in time.

As for the other issue, the addresses on the router are all static assigned and bound to the MAC address of each device. The wifi remain active when I lose connections to the MUDs(for instance, I could be playing Overwatch and that will remain connected, but the MUD will drop connection). As such, pinging the router is still perfectly functional when the connection drops, since it seems to be specifically with that application and not anything else on my PC. Perhaps it is related to the wifi adapter's MIMO power save function? If I set a timer to send data to the MUD every 30 seconds, the connection appears to remain stable, though I have not done extensive testing with this and cannot be certain that is the case entirely.

 

[JustSomeNumbers]

Update: I set the RTS Threshold for both the 2.4 and 5 Ghz bands to 500, and set the beacon interval for both bands to 40. This seems to have stabilized the connection for all devices and have lasted at least the last 12 hours without losing their connection to the router. This seems to be the solution, and it's my understanding this was probably due to outside interference from another device. This seems to have solved my problem entirely, and I'll create a new thread if the issue returns.

 

[WeShallNeverSurrender]

Had to register and sign up to this forum just to say thanks. This solution that you found has actually made my connection super stable. I was getting crazy instability with the latency on this router, but since trying out the RTS threshold and beacon edits that you suggested, it seems to have made it significantly more stable.

Thank you for taking the time to update this post with your fix, really appreciated!

 

[Piffs]

Also registered to forum to say thanks. Fixed my Archer C2 with the above fix! The 5ghz was dropping everytime was traffic on it and the router had to be restarted. Hope tplink gives you a beer!