WiFi Question for the Maestroed.

Jay Nation

I mostly use my Maestro on the shack desk. I have a 1000M wired Ethernet connection for it on the desk. The the distance between the desk and the WiFi router is less than 12 feet total, but the signal does have to go through a 1 large glass window and the shack wall. The signal quality meter on the Maestro will sometimes indicate Excellent, sometimes Poor, on both the wired and WiFi. More often, when I leave it connected to the CAT5e but select a WiFi connection instead it indicates both connections are in use and usually indicates Excellent quality. 

Is it possible it's using both connections? Both connections are visible in the router. 

I've told the Maestro to forget all the WiFi connections to stop it from getting a WiFi connection, only allowing the wired connection. Mostly Excellent quality when doing that. I Unplug the Cat5e to force WiFi only connections, and some of the time those indicate Excellent. 

It's hard to troubleshoot intermittent WiFi quality issues.

It's not likely to be a WiFi congestion/interference issue, None of the neighbors seem to have any WiFi in operation. I'm Rural so that helps. 

Does Maestro give any indication of which it's using, when it's operating and indicates IP assignments for both?

 73, Jay - NO5J
 

KC9NRN

Devices having both WiFi and Ethernet use one or the other but never both. What wireless device are you using?

Jay Nation

NordicPC

Maestro. 
Maestro does indicate both in use, maybe it's a bug, too early to know.

73, Jay - NO5J

KC9NRN

I meant what kind of wireless device is providing the connection? An access point or wireless router?

Yeah, if it's showing both in use that could be a bug since Windows won't do that, not even the kind they're using in the MAESTRO.

I can't wait to get mine!

Jay Nation

NordicPC

A Netgear WNDR3700v3 dual band router. Presently, I've also got an Apple Airport Extreme with the radios turned off, that was performing almost identically.

73, Jay - NO5J

Jay Nation

I've had no trouble with 3 different Android devices getting signals in the shack or anywhere in the house. The wife's Android usually can get a signal from inside the car out in the driveway. I think it might just be buggy WiFi quality indications from the Maestro. When it's indicating a poor signal it doesn't seem to have any effect on being able to use it. Out here in the boonies you get your utilities mounted on a service pole next to the house. My Internet is Fiber to the Service pole and around 25 feet of Cat6 to my Netgear Router in the house, I've got all the Ethernet connections  in the shack connected to a 10M/100M/1000M switch, and the Switch connected to the router in the house through about 15 feet of CAT5e.

I've considered moving the switch into the house and the router into the shack.
and turning the Airport Extreme back on in the house for the Androids to use.

Before anybody starts wondering why. By using the Maestro, I get more screen real estate free'd on the PC for digital apps/loggers and such. and I don't have to worry about the mouse stealing focus every time I click a slider.  

73, Jay - NO5J  

KC9NRN

Well I doubt there is any issue with your internet, if there was there would be other issues.  

Does the Maestro lose signal then slowly go back up? Can you duplicate with a laptop?

Martin AA6E

I also see IP addresses assigned to both Wifi and Ethernet.  This happens when I first connect with Ethernet, and then try to switch to Wifi.  My router shows that both paths have DHCP leases.  Hard to tell which path is really active on Maestro, unless you disconnect the Ethernet cable, of course.

If you fiddle with the startup menus and touch this or that icon, you can eventually connect on Ethernet without Wifi being active -- without forgetting Wifi networks.  But I would not say it's an intuitive process!

The 10/100/1000 Ethernet autoselects the highest available bit rate.  I find that my 1000 Gbs switch produces a noticeable (low) error rate, even with short Cat6 cables.  (It's a D-Link "Green" unit that may be trying to save a little too much energy.) A direct 6500-Maestro connection seems to be error-free at 1 Gbs. 

To get a solid zero error rate, I have replaced the fancy switch with an inexpensive 10/100 unit, and that works fine. 

I'm being fussy.  Wifi does have some cost in reliability, but probably not enough to bother you if your Wifi environment is reasonable.

Jay Nation

NordicPC

Nope just the Signal Quality meter seems to fade to 1 red or yellow bar then slowly goes back to all green. The Maestro keeps chugging along. I'll se a few dropped packets more than 3, less than 20 over a 8-10 hour stretch when it's all green. When it's fading it's not always dropping packets. and it has exhibited the same behavior both WiFi only and wired only. So the quality diagnostic isn't doing me much good.

Martin
You just reminded me I've also got a 10/100 router packed away somewhere. Might be worth experimenting with it too.

Before researching the next router or switch purchase, I think I need to prove there's something wrong with what I already have.

I don't want to waste money now and then read a changelog item that says Fixed Faulty WiFi Signal quality indications.

I'm not in a rush, the Maestro working as FB as I need it to so far. I've only had it for a little over a week. Still mastering the Maestro. 

73, Jay - NO5J  

Bob- W5TX

Jay

I have had similar issues with home lan slowing to a crawl when a device has both selected.  Using the supplied Verizon router.  I'm in Alaska so can't tell you what the brand of the router Version supplied.  I contacted Verizon and they said to pick one or the other with all devices.  Sure enough,
when I selected only one with my iMac (main computer) problem vanished.  Using GB switch and GB port on router with 75MB fiber to house.  I've not seen the issue with the Flex or Maestro but I've been on the road for about 6 weeks.  

Bob W5TX

Al K0VM

Jay,
  something to try..
  If your wifi router has a mode option in its wifi setup ( i.e. mode a,b,g,n ), try setting it to wifi mode n only ( not auto mode select)..  It has stabilized my Maestro on wifi..  But YMMV

AL, K0VM

KC9NRN

Can you post a video of the occurrence? 

Jay Nation

Al 
With the current installed Netgear firmware this router uses, there isn't a "n" only option, however I can turn off either of the 2.4 or 5 radio's. I think "n" is/was a 5g feature so turning off the 2.4g radio might have a similar result.

I can't really explain the WiFi signal strength decline inside the shack the walls are wooden, I built them and there's no metal other than nails in them. Using the Maestro in the house next to the router, the WiFi is Excellent. I "can" find dead spots in the coverage outdoors though when I try hard enough.

I may be learning that instead of the Switch in the shack, I need a WiFi router in the shack and a Switch on the shack desk. The Switch  is mainly being used to split the single incoming Ethernet connection into 5 - 6 separate Ethernet connections for all of the Shack devices. 

73, Jay - NO5J

Wayne VK4ACN

Ive got a Asus RTAC68u..  I use it as an access point, as the router is the cable modem.  Get some packet dropouts on 5ghz wifi.  I changed the wireless settings to legacy.  I had the choice of N or N/ac or legacy.  Channel bandwidth dropped to 20mhz.  But so far it is better, getting no packet drops, excellent signal, and latency <1ms.  The access point is in the next room, centre of the house with a timber wall between the maestro and it.  Try that.

73  Wayne

ps  if you have the wired ethernet plugged into the maestro, pull that out when on wifi

Jay Nation

Martin

After many attempts I did manage to get the wired connection "only" option active. Not sure yet what actually did the trick, I think it had something to do with the icons in the lower left. Initially tapping that icon resulted in Connected to WiFi and Ethernet. At some point Tapping it resulted in Connected to Ethernet.  I then told it to start Maestro and it did connect only to the Ethernet IP. It's been running perfectly on the Ethernet connection for about 9 hours, Excellent signal quantity, 0 dropped packets, Max Latency 1ms. Before when it indicated Both IP addresses it always had trouble with Signal quality, and occasional dropped packets. So it "can" work on wired Ethernet, which for now suit's me fine. I still need a solution for the deadspot in the WiFi signal on the shack desk, I may look at WiFi extenders, or maybe even another WiFi router inside the shack. I'm reluctant to jump into a shack WiFi router before waiting to see if updates to the Maestro software change things. I'm not trying to blame it on the software, I really believe it ought to be blamed on low WiFi signal strength on the shack desk. I also look at switching out the gigabit switch in the shack with a 10/100m switch when i locate where I stashed it at. I had 2, I quit using them when I accidently plugged one of the wallwart's into the wrong device and melted the wallwart.

73, Jay - NO5J

Jay Nation

NordicPC 

First I need to try to capture the video with my cellphone I guess, then learn how to export and publish it. I haven't made the move to GoPro yet. 

73, Jay - NO5J

Jay Nation

After sleeping on the issue overnight I think I may have dreamed up a solution, that will only require a little elbow grease. Should my dream scheme work, I'll post an explanation. It's sort of a, Duh! Why not? Do it, did it work?, kind of idea. 

73, Jay - NO5J

Jay Nation

Long story short: I got it to work.

I moved My Netgear WNDR3700v3 router into the shack.
I setup my wife's Apple Time CapsuleAirport to be the Base Station router, it now does WiFi for the house, connects directly to the internet, handles DHCP for the LAN side, and does NAT to route incoming Mail and Web server traffic to the Server in the shack, all of which was previously being handled by the Netgear router.

I discovered  that the Netgear router has an undocumented AP mode, which can be enabled by simply not configuring it to provide DHCP and NAT, and not connecting the WAN connection to anything.

By connecting an Ethernet cable between the Time Capsule/Airport LAN side and one of the Netgear LAN jacks, which results in it behaving more like a LAN Switch, All connections to either the WiFi or LAN jacks at the Netgear router are seen as existing on the Time Capsule/Airport LAN, and vice-versa.

Maestro now has more WiFi signal than it needs.

The drawback to this setup is that with the Netgear connected this way there is no way to connect to it to configure it. The work around is that you take it back into the house and temporarily connect it directly to the Internet WAN connection  on the Routers WAN jack, and then connect a PC, or my wife's iMac to one of its LAN connections and then you can login to it normally make you changes and then move it back to the shack.

It appears that newer Netgear models now have an AP option included that makes this a lot simpler to enable.

So my dreamed up solution seems to actually work.

Even though the preparation/implementation knocked me mostly offline for the weekend. 

I'm grinning now!

73, Jay - NO5J

Richard McClelland, AA5S

I can relate to your grin. I've had my own technical success today (unrelated to anything discussed on this message board.)   One thing you might consider: Netgear has an iPhone, and maybe Android, app called Netgear Genie.  It is possible that you could manage your router from that.

Jay Nation

Richard
Yes I've got the Android Netgear genie app installed, no luck getting it to login with the router setup as an AP yet.

After figuring out how to get this to work the hard way. I had better ideas on what to use for search terms and located the Netgear tutorial on how to do this on their website, this afternoon. 

Which is how things tend to go for me.

Using their method and starting over from scratch, seems to be working even better than I expected. I can now log into the routers internal web configuration. from the LAN side again. In AP Mode a large portion of the routers routing features are greyed out while AP mode is enabled, but the option to turn off AP mode is now an option.

I will no longer have to push the "reset to defaults" button to be able to access it in AP mode. 

So I can now give the Netgear WNDR3700v3 router a 5 eHam star rating, and a +1 too.

Works good with Maestro now!

73, Jay - NO5J

Richard McClelland, AA5S

Sounds like good progress there.  Thanks for posting this, I hadn't even heard of AP mode before.  I have a single Netgear R7000 router that works well for me but I'm not using it for a 6xxx/Maestro connection, so that doesn't count for much on this forum.

Jay Nation

Richard 
I'd heard of AP (Access Point), but didn't know that was what I was trying to set up.

AP
Access Point
Switch
Bridge
Router
Firewall
Extender
WiFi
Ethernet
Wired
Wireless

All have definitions, all also seem to be buzzwords, and all seem to be interchangeable terms depending on the experience level of the people discussing the solutions.

Similar to the SDR / DSP situation.

The people that know what they talking about, rarely need to discuss the differences.
The people that don't know the differences, don't know the definitions. 

Netgear seems to think it ought to be AP, many of their customers seem to think it ought to be anything but AP.

Makes it hard to google for the correct information.

73, Jay - NO5J

 

AA0KM

Wireless Access Point vs Wireless Repeater-Extender - What's the Difference?

Good video here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJX19hi5qWA

Jay Nation

Funny thing!

The video that followed that video you linked, turned out to be a video demonstrating exactly what it was I was up over the weekend. It even featured my Netgear router. 

Duh! I must remember to search YouTube  after trying Google.

Here's the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3plXzZ1Ckc#t=925.469926

If I'd seen it before, it wouldn't have taken a days worth of frustration and confusion.

But it's all good now! My pride's dinged a little. But I managed it on my own with no outside help, the first time round. 

I'm not really keeping score anymore, I know I'm not winning!

73, Jay - NO5J