Problem with guest networks and using a switch

[acastleberry]

Hi all...hoping someone might have seen this issue before or have some ideas. I am struggling with this:

I have 3 Asus ET12 Pro devices set up in AiMesh using wired backhaul. Main router was connected to 2 additional nodes via 1G LAN ports. Everything has worked fine for months.  I recently decided to start upgrading some of my LAN hardware and now have a multi-gig core switch that I am using. When I installed the new switch, I rewired the 2 nodes through the switch to take advantage of 2.5G connectivity to the main router, instead of using the 1G ports on the router.

Everything seemed to work fine, but then I discovered that my guest and IoT wifi networks were no longer roaming clients to the 2 nodes...clients will only connect to the main router. I tested this by joining an iPhone to guest network then trying to bind the connection to a node. It will not work.

I have a feeling it has something to do with how Asus handles VLANs on these devices, so I installed the beta 9.0.0.6.102_4856 software on them that adds better support for VLANs, but I still can't get any guest/IoT clients to connect to a node. Main wifi SSID works fine, it's only these 2 additional SSIDs and only on the nodes.

Any ideas from anyone?

[acastleberry]

Okay, I was missing something simple...when I set up the 2 additional SSIDs/VLANs, I did not notice that my 2 nodes were offline (rebooting).  So when I set saved the config, it was only applied to the main router.  I went back to the Guest Network Pro > Network > AiMesh Mode page and selected the other 2 nodes.  Now my clients are connecting okay.

I can confirm this was not the case when setting switchports to Trunk mode.  I factory reset my Asus hardware after that and set up again from scratch.

So the answer is to set the PVID on each switchport to the default VLAN ID (1 in my case) and then set up the other VLANs on all uplink switch ports and tag them, leaving the default VLAN untagged.

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[Valdo]

- use UNmanaged switch to connect the nodes to router

- change the 2,4 GHz roaming setting from -70dB to -60dB (eventually -55dB in case of greater distances between router and nodes)

[acastleberry]

1.  You can't use an unmanaged switch with VLANs.

2.  The clients not connecting doesn't have anything to do with RSSI.  It has everything to do with how Asus handles VLANs between guest networks.  If the mesh nodes can't reach the main router over a secondary VLAN, then clients will never connect to that VLAN.

[Valdo]

1) the user didn't mention that he's using VLAN, just IoT and Guest network. For whatever reason he suspects that the problem is caused by VLAN. It is? If yes and he's is using a managed switch the connection router -> nodes wont work.

2) just do it.