BLUE disconnecting

Dear all,

first of all i would like to thank everybody in this forum supporting and helping others!

I’m pretty new to IPFire and this forum helped me a lot to set everything up and find solutions for my problems which I had during the process.

But now I’m experiencing some trouble and could not find a solution here or in the documentation. We bought an IPFire Mini Appliance just do manage our LAN, after half a year our Wifi router (fritzbox) broke so we turned on blue (following the documentation) on IPFire. This is where the trouble begins, the Wifi is working, but partially (like 5-8 times per day) we have a period of 10-15 minutes were some devices (only one or two at a time, rest works without any issues) are disconnected and are not able to reconnect. After said period of time it is working again without any issue. If one device (for example my laptop) disconnects, I can work with another laptop in the same wifi without any issues. The problem does not seem to be OS specific is we are facing the problem with Iphones, Android phones, Mac and Windows Laptops. Also the problem only happens on Wifi, with LAN everything is working flawless. Sometimes, we can solve the issue by getting really close to the IPfire (like 1m) to not get disconnected any more. Here are my settings:

I already checked CPU, Memory and storage usage graph but could not find any problems. Any help is appreciated.
Best regards
Quanta

Looking at the info of the mini appliance:

Also, I would set the signal power instead of relying on auto.

Thank you very much, I previously used the suggested settings from the wiki but had way more disconnects so I removed them again.

I’m also not sure if the wireless mode 802.11gn is correct, but as soon as I set it to 802.11ac the wifi can not be found (I just tried with the HT / VHT caps filled in but same issue)

Also what number would you suggest for Tx Power?

Additional I’m confused regarding the country and encryption settings, if I change country to DE (as we are in germany) OR change encryption to WPA 3 or WPA 2+3 everything is still working with all devices expect my colleges Iphone 14. As soon as we change one of the metioned settings the Iphone can no longer connect, we also tested an older Iphone with same issue.

Can this somehow be related?

Thanks for the help!

I’m sorry to correct you here, but this informations are partially wrong.

If you dive into the hostapd.conf-file and the caps (iw list) of the compex module (the one from the old Mini Appliance), the right caps would be:

HT: [LDPC][HT40+][SHORT-GI-20][SHORT-GI-40][TX-STBC][RX-STBC1][MAX-AMSDU-7935][DSSS_CCK-40]

Explanation: You do not use “HT40+” AND “HT40-”, just one of those. Furthermore “LDPC” and “DSSS_CCK-40” are supported by the compex, so it is advised to put those in.

VHT: [MAX-MPDU-11454][RXLDPC][SHORT-GI-80][TX-STBC-2BY1][RX-STBC-1][MAX-A-MPDU-LEN-EXP3][RX-ANTENNA-PATTERN][TX-ANTENNA-PATTERN]

Explanation: “MAX-A-MPDU-LEN-EXP3” has to be “3” not “7”, the confusion here comes from the exponent which has to be read differently.

Also, you don’t use “BF-ANTENNA-2” and “SOUNDING-DIMENSION-2”, since these caps are related to beamforming, the compex does not support this. And “VHT-LINK-ADAPT3” is not supported either, since it is nowhere listed in the “iw list”.

Greetings

Alex

4 Likes

So it seems like the documentation is in need to be fixed.

If you or someone has a good profile to post to replace the incorrect settings in the documentation. Please do so since you can submit changes.

I don’t run a wifi router type myself so otherwise I can only try to help them with documentation that is available.

I run blue on an ethernet interface instead and use access points because wifi technology changes and I don’t want my network to go down if the wifi malfunctions. Plus in my case, where the router has to be is not a good place for a wifi access point.

1 Like