For the past few months I have had intermittent problems which are only rectified by doing a reconnect of my Almond repeater to my ASUS router. The signal strength for the repeater is "full bars", and Windows says I have internet access, but no web page will come up. Once I tell the Almond to reconnect, I am good to go ... for a while. If I change my network connection to go directly to the router and not use the repeater, I can get out on the internet just fine. My other devices in the house that go directly to the router also get out on the internet fine at these times.
Sometimes when I attempt to reconnect the repeater to the router the connection fails. This is random, and independent of where in the house I place the repeater. In fact, I have placed the repeater right next to the router and still had random problems getting the repeater to connect.
Any thoughts? Have I got a defective unit?
Unfortunately this is difficult to troubleshoot properly, because "
Range Extender" mode is basically a "
wireless bridge" between the radios in both the main router (
Asus in your case), and the
Almond in it's
Range Extender mode. If there are wireless connectively issues between them you don't know which end actually failed. Power cycling either device would probably solve the problem, (even if only temporarily), so using this as a troubleshooting step is somewhat inconclusive.
It you want to determine whether or not the Almond is the problem, you might want to consider setting the
Almond up as an
Access Point instead of a
Range Extender. To operate your
Almond as an
Access Point you simply wire the
WAN port of the
Almond to one of the
LAN ports of the main router. This effectively replaces the "
wireless bridge" provided by the
Range Extender with a hard wired CAT5/6 cable. If you do this you can review the Wi-Fi behaviour between the
Almond and it's clients against the behaviour of the main router and its clients.
You haven't identified your main router model, but some
Broadcom radio chips allegedly have issues with a "
stuck beacon" which effectively stops all data traffic on an
established connection. Renewing the connection, by reseting
either device, thus causing reconnect usually resolves it. (I have even seen messages is some Forums recommending powercycling the Router daily to prevent the problem, but I can not recommend this solution)
Check to ensure that you are using up to date Firmware on both devices, this might improve the quality or your "
Range Extender" connectivity, or simply try the
Access Point feature so that the
Almond can reserve it's radio for servicing Wi-Fi clients without needing to "
bridge" itself to the main router. (It really depends on how easy/possible/expensive it would be to wire them together, you should also get better throughput to the Internet from your wireless devices, if the Almond doesn't have to "
repeat" every packet. Give the
Access Point feature a try. It works very well here, and I never have to worry about the connection to my main router.
To setup
Access Point mode simply connect the
WAN port of the
Almond to one of the
LAN ports on the
Asus, and follow the menus on the
TouchUI. It's two clicks to set it up. The feature is positively brilliant. In this mode the
Almond will pick a LAN address for itself via
DHCP on it's
WAN port from your main router (so it joins your pre-existing network). All
DHCP for your network will be at your main router.