WET610N will not stay connected to WRT600N

[jdamien75]

I currently have a new WET610N that is being used as a bridge to a WRT600N access point.  The WET610N consistently disconnects from the WRT600N & will only re-connect if the WET610N is power cycled. 

Based on the timing of the disconnects, which happen regardless of if traffic is actively flowing across the wireless bridge, it seems that the connection fails around the time that a new wireless key is supposed to be negotiated.

Both devices are running the latest firmware & have WPA2-Personal with AES setup for security.  The shared key between the two devices is a 26 character hexadecimal value to prevent dictionary style attacks.  Since the two devices make the initial connection, the problem does not appear to be with the key or the security settings.  If the issue was there, then the devices would not connect at all.

Since I don't have a wireless Sniffer that can capture traffic using the "N" standard, I can't figure out exactly what is happening when the failure occurs.

If anyone else is having this issue, please provide feedback on what you have the WET610N paired with & what settings are used for communication.  With that information, we can hopefully narrow down where the issue is in the WET610N or it's configuration.

Thanks.

[helm]

How often do you get disconnected ? Is it very frequest ?

Did you try to reset your bridge to factory settings and then re-configure it ?

If not you should try to hard reset the Bridge and then re-configure it again from the scratch...See if there is an improvement...

[jdamien75 · Accepted solution]

Per my first post:

Based on the timing of the disconnects, which happen regardless of if traffic is actively flowing across the wireless bridge, it seems that the connection fails around the time that a new wireless key is supposed to be negotiated.

I've actually come to a resolution for the issue regarding the disconnects.  The resolution points to something not working correctly in the WRT600N firmware.

I loaded the DD-WRT "Mega" firmware onto the WRT600N & the connection has been working perfectly since last night.

[Zalman]

I'm having the same issue. WET610n is connected to a switch and then to my pc. When downloading anything on my pc or at high load the wet610n craps itself and disconnects. It's running in 5ghz mixed mode and WPA2/AES. But my laptop which is running in 2.4ghz stays connected and never drops out when downloading. Also the WGA600n connected to my xbox360 never has the issue.

The only way to reconnect, is by power cycling my wrt600n router. It's a joke that someone has to use 3rd party firmware to make it run more stable. I'm stuck as to what it is. Either a setting in the router needs to be changed or the wet610n is a just unstable.

Anyone having simialr issues?

[jdamien75]

Whenever I got the dropout, I just power cycled the WET610N itself.

The connection has been up & solid for a couple of days after flashing the DD-WRT firmware to the WRT600N, so I'm just going to leave the third party firmware on the router since it doesn't look like it's getting much love from Linksys.

[Zalman]

Well it seems the WRT600N was the problem (as I have to power cycle that to get the WET610N reconnected). When set to WPA2 the WET610N would disconnect on high load, ie downloading. When I set the WRT600N to WPA, the WET610N no longer drops out.

[jdamien75]

I previously had a G based access point connected to the WRT600N using WPA2 & never had any issues with it.  Same with all my A/B/G clients...

Either the WET610N wasn't fully baked or there are issues with WPA2 & high speed (N) connections to the WRT600N...

EDIT:  Also, the WET610N doesn't have all the same WPA-Personal options (AES / TKIP) as the WRT600N.

Message Edited by jdamien75 on 05-30-2009 04:48 PM

[chrisinsocalif]

I have used the DD-WRT firmware and Linksys where the WET610N cuts out where I have to reboot the router to get it connected again. I tried without encryption and still had the WET610N to lose connection to the 5 Ghz radio. So its not related to the wireless key. The WET610N is hooked to my PS3 where I stream media and play games. The random disconnects and dropping of games are quite annoying. 

I will try to reload the newer DD-WRT on my router and hope it will connect correctly.  I do not have much faith in it working since it didnt work for me before. 

[chrisinsocalif]

I used the DD-WRT firmware and did NOT fix the problem, the signal still dropped out where I had to reboot the router until i changed the TCP timings from 3600 to 120 and the adapter stayed connected. I used DD-WRT 13064 which was the most current when writing this. I could not even connect to DD-WRT with WPA2 encryption, so I had to test with encryption disabled.. But there are issues with current DD-WRT build, which caused my internet to drop and not use encryption. If there is a way to change TCP timeout settings on the stock Linksys firmware, i think we would be having less problems with disconnects. Anyone know how this can be done?

[chrisinsocalif]

I have changed a lot of Settings and so far the Linksys WRT600N has not dropped my WET610N.

I will try to pinpoint which setting causes the drops but this is what i have now.

Wireless>Basic Wireles Settings (for the N 5 GHz radio Only)

Network Mode: Wireless N only

Radio Band: Wide - 40 MHz Channel

Wide Channel: 46

Standard Channel: 48 - 5.240GHz

SSID Broadcast: Enabled

 Wireless>Wireless Security

Wireless Security: WPA2-Personal 

Encryption: AES

Key Renewal: 120 seconds

 Wireless>Advanced Wireless Settings (5 GHz Advanced)

AP Isolation: Disabled

Frame Burst: Disabled

Authentication Type: Auto

Basic Rate: All

Transmission Rate: Auto

N Transmission Rate: mcs11:108 Mbps (I can't connect higher, but my Adapter is not close, try to see  if your adapter can connect at a higher rate, see below)

Transmission Power: High

CTS Protection Mode: Disabled

Beacon Interval: 50

DTIM Interval: 128 (not good if you have a something running on batteries using the N radio since it requires more battery power with a higher DTIM number)

Fragmentation Threshold: 2306

RTS Threshold: 2307

I am sure you dont need to copy all the settings to what I have since I was changing everything until the WET610N to stay connected. I would start with the N Transmission Rate and see if that is the problem. 

My guess Is that when you put the N Transmission Rate on Auto, it has a problem figuring out the correct rate and drops the signal. So what i did is change the N Transmission Rates until my WET610N connected. First I started at mcs15:270mps, waited to see if my WET610 connected, then went down to mcs14:243mbps, waited and kept going down the line till my WET610 connected. My WET610 only gets around 22% of the WRT600N's signal so maybe that is why the N Transmission Rate is only on mcs11.

Also you do not need CTS protection if you have less than 3 devices connected to that radio from what i understand.  

I will try to put my settings back to normal and try them one by one, but it takes a while to test. Usually I have to play an online game from my PS3 or stream a movie for a couple of hours to see if it will stay connected. So its a long process but I will keep trying(and learning.)