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Weird Router (wifi) question

cutting42

Arrived at B4 Hacker Ergo
I have an ASUS AC5300 router running my house network, mostly wired but a few wireless things - iPhones/Pads, Sky boxes etc and it all works fine..... except for simple Wi-Fi connections from Printers, electronic scales and a couple of other things.

I have worked round this for years by setting up a range extender as a second wireless network and then those printers etc connect perfectly.

I remain very curious why my fancy expensive router will not let these items connect either at all or reliably. The most recent issue was with a new Canon Pixma printer my daughter bought, it is fairly fancy but just would not connect to the Wi-Fi and had no hardwire port. We nearly returned it until I remembered about the weirdness and connected to my range extender, worked perfectly.

The router setup is simple straight from the box, two separate channels for 2.4g and 5g gets updated regularly and all phones etc work perfectly connection to it. It has WPA2 Personal AES authentication

Help please?
 
No great answers but it's not unknown - perhaps a lousy internal wifi aerial - it'll be just a pcb trace, and concealed on the wrong side of the smps or something when you put it where you want to use it. Prob worked fine in testing, when their production test wifi sender is on the same bench... that or really daft software, one of my great peeves about things that should 'just work'.

My dad's just had sim with his HP scanner printer, sat barely 4' from the router(!) and despite being actually wired direct via USB to his PC, when he'd accidentally hit the 'wifi' connect' button - located right next to power-on/off, of course, the button he was aiming for - nope appeared to have failed as a device at next switch on, Windows repeatedly reporting printer offline etc - even though it would chuck out a print. Simple to fix - press the button again - but frustrating for him in the moment (Mum's ipad for facetime, teamviewer, done... helps so much with very-remote admin & support; not that its needed often)
 
Connecting and using printers at home is the devils work. They are an absolute pain and I really do not understand why.
 
Just general thoughts - older devices may not work with 5gig so just use 2.4gig as a test for a couple days. Older kit won't be happy with AES - TKIP is older less secure but might work better - you may have something like WPA2 - AES/TKIP as a choice. Reasonably new gear is fine with both 5gig and AES.

Setting Static IPs via the Router for Printers etc - can help.
 
Anybody seen today’s fun fact in El Reg about WiFi being enabled as a detection device. Apparently, analysis of the WiFi signal can detect objects and movement by the way it attenuates the signal. Big Brother’s not going to need that camera, we’ve already got routers that can do all he needs.
 
We've been over this several times on pfm and its always been a misconfiguration. One member was going to send his printer to landfill and then we got it working.

With printers there are usually several modes of operation but they are exclusive i.e. only one mode at a time and thats where most people fall down.

Ask yourself how many printers are in this World and for how many years (decades) and if there really was a connectivity problem we would have definitely heard about it by now.

Also as has been pointed out whilst I was writing this post most printers in use only work on the 2.4GHz band.

To the OP if the pixama would not connect to the WiFi did it actually see your SSID and then refuse to connect - if so there is a config mismatch somewhere. If the printer didn't see the SSID then it was probably in the wrong mode.

Cheers,

DV
 
Thanks for the replies so far. To reiterate, I do have it working but only via the range extender but would like to find out why the ASUS will not see it but works fine with other Wi-Fi devices.

This is a process I went through trying to get it to work initially. The Pixma is a newish model IP8750 and supports AES but not 5Ghz. It recognises the SSID and apparently connects but I cannot see it in the connections listings on the ASUS web portal but it will print out the connection settings and I can address the IP address directly and access the PIXMA web portal page and see/change the configurations. However any print applications on the PC do not see it and will not print to it but I can print a test page from the web portal. I really think it is a configuration problem with the router. All connections have been via the 2.4ghz channel and I know about the modes of connection with the Pixma very well and I do agree with comments that they need to follow a certain process. We had pretty decent support from Canon to do this but even with their help could not get it to be seen correctly or for long. I did manage to get it to print on one glorious day but never to be repeated sadly.

Worth saying that I have a Wi-Fi weighing scale that has the same issue, I could not connect it to the router but it works perfectly using the extender Wi-Fi which leads me to think that the issue is a router config not a printer config.

The extender is a Netgear EX6400
 
This is the sort of problem that if I'm sitting in front of the screen and have access to the printer can usually fix in 5mins or so because then I can see all the clues.

First the Language used such as this "It recognises the SSID and apparently connects" is actually meaningless to me as is most of the rest. Well perhaps thats because I am thick or an old fogy thats out of date.

So "I can address the IP address directly". Hmm what is the IP address of the printer? If you are on a Windows machine bring up a cmd prompt and type ping "ip address of printer" if on macOS do the same in terminal. At this point we are just trying to undertstand your SOHO network. If a computer can ping the ip address of the printer then its reachable and if you can't print to it then its something else and not the network.

A process of elimination.

Cheers,

DV
 
This is the sort of problem that if I'm sitting in front of the screen and have access to the printer can usually fix in 5mins or so because then I can see all the clues.

First the Language used such as this "It recognises the SSID and apparently connects" is actually meaningless to me as is most of the rest. Well perhaps thats because I am thick or an old fogy thats out of date.

So "I can address the IP address directly". Hmm what is the IP address of the printer? If you are on a Windows machine bring up a cmd prompt and type ping "ip address of printer" if on macOS do the same in terminal. At this point we are just trying to undertstand your SOHO network. If a computer can ping the ip address of the printer then its reachable and if you can't print to it then its something else and not the network.

A process of elimination.

Cheers,

DV


Probably my poor explanation ;-)

I do have a fair bit of knowledge (probably a dangerous thing) and am that guy in a group that fixes PC problems for other people and solves other home networking troubles so I will try to be more precise. This has been beating me up for years, I have spent so much time on it but when I got the workaround I stopped sweating about it as I can get everything to work but I hate not knowing why the ASUS will not do this.

The printer system to setup connection to my SSID works and passes its check for connection but ultimately fails later and will not complete the installation as it can't connect. However when I then use a key press combination it will print out the Wi-Fi connection details including the IP address. I can then type in the IP address into my browser (Chrome or IE) and access the printer directly. However the IP address does not show up in the Router connection list. I can also ping the IP address. I cannot print to the printer and the print driver does not recognise the printer.

If I repeat all the above using the Netgear Extender (which has a wired connection into the same router but its own SSID, also using WPA2 AES) it all works perfectly as the PIXMA instructions outline.
 
Rolled back firmware to older version? Backup config / reset / restore config? Messed with the Smart Connect?

It’s a pretty fancy router with a lot of trick Wifi and Tech

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/asus-rt-ac5300-wireless-printer-problems.40121/

https://www.snbforums.com/threads/rt-ac5300-issues-with-printer-sonos-wi-fi-dropout-help.47958/

Is this it?


Yup, that's the baby and other than this problem it is perfect with amazing Wi-Fi coverage for the whole house and handles all the kit and the NAS with no issues. Just this weird thing with some Wi-Fi kit. I have tried several updates and roll backs although to be honest I have not rolled back recently only way back when I first saw this problem (not with the PIXA, another printer and the aforementioned Wi-Fi scales.

I did struggle with Sono on it but ended up wiring the Sonos and the issues disappeared.
 
Quick Google gave a few hits with similar problems. The fact your cable to Netgear kludge works would suggest the Asus has a bug.
 
Quick Google gave a few hits with similar problems. The fact your cable to Netgear kludge works would suggest the Asus has a bug.


Yeah, I have seen those links you posted before as I have searched for stuff about it. I suspect you are correct, just shocked they have not fixed as it has been a few years. Maybe I will report to them if they care!
 
amazing Wi-Fi coverage for the whole house

why did you need the extender in the first place?

I have one of those extenders, and find it mightily unreliable as a range extender, but works very reliably as a wired WiFi hotspot
 
Could be many things, interference from rein sources (devices that fail FCC compliance) or other sources such as low voltage LED lighting and or transformers, could be the wireless standard they don't like and your router is having trouble with backwards compatibility from wireless N, it could be the dual band playing up, or just the devices are causing an issue
 
why did you need the extender in the first place?

I have one of those extenders, and find it mightily unreliable as a range extender, but works very reliably as a wired WiFi hotspot

I bought it originally to try and extend my previous home setup Wi-Fi range but as you found, they are pretty unreliable so it was in the spare stuff box. When I was trying to solve my Wi-Fi connection troubles per this thread, I dug it out and used it in wired mode to see if it made a difference and it did so I use it for things that don’t connect to the ASUS. The PIXMA, an HP multipurpose printer/scanner and a set of scales.
 


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