Hi all,
I’m using IpFire as a firewall for a separated home wifi network for my smart-home devices controlled by HomeAssistant.
Both the HomeAssistant and IpFire are running in VMs on a Proxmox hypervisor (N100 mini-pc). Ipfire is there to provide the wifi connections as well as firewall to isolate all the IoT devices to local-network only (no internet access) while giving me ability to connect in remotely and control everything as needed.
The wifi network has total of 18 wifi clients (7 light switches, 8 power outlets, a dishwasher and 2 cameras). Wifi is ran by passing through a USB Wifi stick with RTL8812BE, but also have ran it using a passthrough PCIe card with RTL8852BE chipset.
Wifi is running only in 802.11n mode on 2.4 GHz as most of these IoT devices only support this band. Tried multiple wifi channels with the same results.
All of this has worked perfectly fine for the past year all the way up to core198.
Now after upgrade to core199 with the new hostapd, the wifi still works, but the individual devices keep disconnecting at random.. sometimes the light switch to one room disconnects for a few minutes, or hours, then it is connected again, but a different light switch disconnects.. or the camera, or the power outlet.
I haven’t found any pattern to which devices disconnect and when, it seems completely random.
My best guess is that the new version of hostapd has some kind of default config that is more sensitive and disconnects more aggressively (some of the devices have pretty low signal and their reported connection rate can sometimes show rates of only 5.5 or 11 mbit) - but this has not been an issue to actual usability before with the older core & hostapd.
I’ve tried this upgrade twice now, but each time end up with the same results.
Only option for me is to restore the VM from backup back to core198 (luckily i backed it up before the upgrade) - and then the wifi once again works reliably as it did for the last year.
Does anyone have any suggestions what configuration in hostapd could be causing it, has anyone experienced similar issues?
Adding config files and screenshot of the wifi settings (with removed sensitive bits).
#### [root@ipf-hass ~]# cat /var/ipfire/wlanap/settings
COUNTRY=IE
HTCAPS=
CHANNEL=4
BAND=2g
APMODE=on
HIDESSID=off
IEEE80211W=off
SSID=HassWifi
MODE=HT20
TXPOWER=auto
CLIENTISOLATION=off
HW_MODE=
INTERFACE=80:af:ca:64:3e:e7
PWD=PASSWORD-REMOVED
VHTCAPS=
NOSCAN=on
TX_POWER=
ENC=wpa2
------------------------
#### [root@ipf-hass ~]# cat /etc/hostapd.conf
# Automatically generated configuration
# DO NOT EDIT
logger_syslog=-1
logger_syslog_level=4
driver=nl80211
country_code=IE
country3=0x49
ieee80211d=1
ieee80211h=1
channel=4
local_pwr_constraint=3
spectrum_mgmt_required=1
enable_background_radar=1
wmm_enabled=1
hw_mode=g
ieee80211n=1
ht_capab=[DSSS_CCK-40] [LDPC] [HT40+][HT40-] [SHORT-GI-20] [MAX-AMSDU-7935] [SHORT-GI-40] [RX-STBC1]
auth_algs=1
ctrl_interface=/var/run/hostapd
ctrl_interface_group=0
disassoc_low_ack=1
ssid2="HassWifi"
utf8_ssid=1
noscan=1
ieee80211w=0
wpa=2
wpa_passphrase=PASSWORD-REMOVED
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK WPA-PSK-SHA256
rsn_pairwise=CCMP
ssid_protection=1
extended_key_id=1
oce=7
interworking=1
access_network_type=0
internet=1
time_advertisement=2
multicast_to_unicast=1
For now I’m downgrading back to core198 with older hostapd, but I’m happy to re-upgrade and test if anyone has any insight on how to make it work properly in 199 again.