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[GreenBay42]

I miss a lot of features from our old routers.

[scan80269]

Some consumer mesh networking products collapse 2.4GHz and 5GHz into a single SSID, so it can get tricky to tell whether a given SSID is on 2.4GHz or 5GHz, as it can be both, especially with dual-band capable clients!  The backhaul channel is normally hidden, but with something like inSSIDer they show up on the list.

BTW, I've had no luck getting a 868L bridge to remain connected to my Netgear Orbi RBR50 router at home (through just one stucco wall, <10 foot separation).  The 868L appears to get confused about whether to talk 2.4GHz or 5GHz for this home SSID (I've seen the wireless channel jump back and forth between ch 4 and ch 36 as displayed in the 868L Status page), and the wireless link typically does not survive overnight: Connection Status becomes Disconnected, Channel becomes N/A.  I've pretty much given up on this, considering that 868L is already EOL.

[FurryNutz]

Since Smart Connect first came out, the 880L was the first to get this for D-Link. Ya, it combines two and 3 radio SSIDs into one, thus automatically taking control of how devices get connected to which radio. This is a Broadcom feature. Normally on non MESH routers there is no back haul of course.

The handling of how devices get connected in MESH is mostly done by the MESH and Smart Connect system. It's really not the client devices fault for getting confused.

I've been using my 868L recently however with one particular COVR MESH system I have, any of my wireless bridged will not connect to the 5Ghz radio. For some reason this particular MESH system is using a DFS channel 64 which I presume shouldn't be used and since most of my bridges are of older generation, they never supported this DFS channel, thus they won't connect.

The 868L should connect to the Orbi. Disable MIMO and Daisy Chain on the Orbi and try. You can test this also by turning down either the 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz radio power on the Orbi system to 25% and leave the other radio at 100% and see if this changes anything.

[GreenBay42]

OK. Engineers have confirmed an issue with the 880L in bridge mode with the netgear router. They will work on a firmware fix but the bad news is since this router is discontinued and getting vendor support can be difficult, they said a new firmware may take 1-2 months   

[FurryNutz]

Great.

Just curious, do the engineers have any work around solutions by chance to help keep the 880L from failing or is this just a hard failure that needs to be fixed by the vendor?

OK. Engineers have confirmed an issue with the 880L in bridge mode with the netgear router. They will work on a firmware fix but the bad news is since this router is discontinued and getting vendor support can be difficult, they said a new firmware may take 1-2 months 

[GreenBay42]

It seems to be some quirk with the netgear router and 880L that the vendor needs to fix. Not sure what the workaround would be. Did it perform better with 2.4Ghz?

[scan80269]

Happy New Year!

My company had a holiday shutdown between Xmas and New Year, and I did a little experiment in my lab:  All D-Link wireless bridges except for one DIR-868L was powered down.  This morning coming back into the lab, the lone 868L bridge (FW=1.12) was still fully functional and downstream clients all have internet access!

I'm starting to wonder if my bridge issues have to do with multiple units linking to the same Netgear router.  The bridges have been sitting about 12 feet from each other, and their behavior have generally improved over the time when I had a 880L & a 868L spaced less than 2 feet apart.

There was very little network traffic in the lab during the shutdown, so it's hard to tell whether it was the reduced traffic or lack of multiple D-Link bridges talking to the same router that lead to the better bridging behavior.

[FurryNutz]

Any chance you can test with the 880L alone?

Happy New Year!

My company had a holiday shutdown between Xmas and New Year, and I did a little experiment in my lab:  All D-Link wireless bridges except for one DIR-868L was powered down.  This morning coming back into the lab, the lone 868L bridge (FW=1.12) was still fully functional and downstream clients all have internet access!

I'm starting to wonder if my bridge issues have to do with multiple units linking to the same Netgear router.  The bridges have been sitting about 12 feet from each other, and their behavior have generally improved over the time when I had a 880L & a 868L spaced less than 2 feet apart.

There was very little network traffic in the lab during the shutdown, so it's hard to tell whether it was the reduced traffic or lack of multiple D-Link bridges talking to the same router that lead to the better bridging behavior.

[scan80269]

Any chance you can test with the 880L alone?

Will try that at the end of the week.

[FurryNutz]

 

[scan80269]

OK, DIR-880L has been set up as the only bridge in the lab.  All downstream clients have normal internet access.

Will see how long this setup can stay working...

[FurryNutz]

 

[scan80269]

The 880L bridge stayed working until 2 days ago, when all downstream clients got cut off from internet.  The 880L web interface was still responsive, but pings to the Netgear router were not returned.  I was able to restore operation by re-selecting the 5GHz SSID already in use then clicking save.  There was no need to power cycle the unit.

So it looks like this 880L unit worked in bridge mode for just under 3 weeks.  One day before I noticed the clients had no internet access, the box was still working normally as far as I could tell.

[FurryNutz]

So what was the configuration used and what have you changed since posting last?

[scan80269]

The change was all the DiR-868L bridges in the lab being powered down, leaving just a single DIR-880L bridge connecting over 5GHz to the Netgear router in the other lab.