Thursday, February 22, 2018

Home Network - Part 2

So that change didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped... turns out the latest firmware for the ASUS RT-AC3200 has a 2.4 GHz bug. It took me a long time to figure out that was the problem.

I noticed the issue on some of my IoT devices and my wife's hand-me-down laptop. I assumed it was a problem with the devices. Basically, I kept getting a bad password error. I ended up trying a lot of different things - laptop driver update, deleting all the network settings, resetting the IoT devices to their default config, changing the SSID, etc.

It wasn't until I realized I was having the problem on my laptop and my iPhone 8 that I started thinking the router was the issue. Originally I had those devices configured to use 5 GHz only, so they never experienced the problem. After a short search, I found this thread: 2.4GHz band issues with RT-AC3200 firmware 3.0.0.4.382_50010. Bingo! That was exactly my problem. I rolled back to an older firmware version and everything has been working like a champ.

On a happier note, I returned my Comcast cable modem, since I had purchased the NETGEAR CM500-1AZNAS. I walked in the retail store, they scanned the label on the modem, and printed a receipt. It took less than 30 seconds. Perfect!

For an upcoming post, I may list all the devices I have connected and note which ones were easy to migrate to the new SSID. (Spoiler Alert - the inexpensive Smart Plugs I bought have some horribly written instructions.)

2 comments:

  1. Interesting Read, I'm about to journey down this same path with Knox Comcast over here on the west side...KK4KKJ.

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    1. Thanks for following - I just realized your comment got tagged as spam. Wonder if it was b/c of the call sign. 73!

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