Linksys Wireless Router :: E4200v1 Never Selects DFS Channels?
Jan 31, 2013
The Cisco E4200 is supposed to support something called DFS (Dynamic Frequency Selection). These are wifi channels that, due to radar operating on the same frequencies in certain areas of the US, the FCC requires devices using them to do what's called "radar avoidance" -- they're supposed to scan the channel periodically and, if a radar signal is detected on said channel, they have to vacate the channel for a specified period of time (typically around 30 minutes). Because of this, a DFS channel cannot be selected manually by the user -- it has to be selected automatically and vacated automatically in case radar is detected. So, I have my E4200 channel set to "Auto(DFS)"
The list of WLAN channels is here: [URL]
More background: each allowed 5 GHz channel is 20 MHz wide in the US. However 802.11n does what's called "channel bonding" -- it actually uses two channels side-by-side for increased throughput. E4200 owners will notice a channel width setting and one of the options is 40 MHz or Auto (20 MHz or 40 MHz) -- this is what uses two channels combined. I happen to have this option set to "Auto (20 MHz or 40 MHz)".
I discovered, through experimentation, that the router will ALWAYS select channel 149/153 as the operating channel if there are no other wireless APs in the area (channel 149 as primary and channel 153 as secondary). I always wanted to see the AP select a DFS channel, so I brought home a bunch of access points and started occupying spectrum. I put AP #1 on channel 149/153 and rebooted my E4200, at which point it picked channel 157/161. So I put AP #2 on channel 157/161 and rebooted the E4200, and it skipped channel 165 (note that there's not enough spectrum up there for 40 MHz, which is probably why it got skipped) and selected channel 36/40. I put AP #3 on channel 36/40 and rebooted the E4200 and to no surprise it picked channel 44/48. So I put AP #4 on channel 44/48 and it picked...channel 149/153?!?!
Just to be certain that there isn't a certain threshold required to force the AP to select a DFS channel, I moved all 4 APs RIGHT NEXT TO the E4200 such that their signal strengths exceeded -40 dBm, and then rebooted the E4200. It STILL picked channel 149/153!
Just what are the criteria required for the E4200 to select a DFS channel?!? DFS is advertised in the user menu, but I can't find any way to get the AP to select one of those channels. Does the AP *really* support them, or does it just say it does? If the E4200 does NOT really support DFS, then Cisco/Linksys should remove the term "DFS" from the user menu -- it is deceptive!!
Oh, I should mention that I'm in Santa Clara County -- Saratoga, CA. I checked the FCC database on radars and as far as I can tell, there are NO radars on DFS frequencies around here.
I have an e4200 V1 with firmeare V 1.0.04 For my IPv4 configuration I use opendns.com for my DNS provider.When I enable IPv6, I get my ISPs DNS server rather than the one I have configured on the IPv4 page. It works, but it eliminates all filtering and statistics that I am able to do with opendns.com.Open DNS does provide two IPv6 DNS servers, but I don't seem to be able to find where to set them in my e4200. I want it set network wide.Can I set my IPv6 DNS provider anywhere in the e4200v1 with V 1.0.04?
I have a Wireless Router supplied by my ISP that give me both 1G Lan and N Band Wireless, so I just need to use my 4200V1 as a Storage Access Point. I have done all the Bridge Mode configurations, IP Address ad Subnet / Default Gateway, etc to the routher and can see it on my Local LAN, by it's Set name.
I can not http or Https to the Config menu in any way, so I can not establish if a Disk is connected or not. The Disk device is USB Connected to the E4200 port, but I can not acceeass any of the files that are on it.
DGW - 192.168.1.1 E4200 - 192.168.1.200 Bridge Mode Wireless Disabled on both Bands DHCP Disabled
Everything appears fine, but not able to bring up Advance Configuration interface .
I've been trying to re-purpose my E4200v1 as a Bridge, AP or some other thing that might work with wifi coverage in my home. I am using an Asus as the primary router. and I have Verizon Fios so I have a coax/ethernet router with its wireless switched off so that the Asus is primary. That works, but when I go to reset the E4200v1, I can get it to take a new IP address, but when I attempt to put it into bridge mode, as soon as I hit "save settings" I see the admin screen flash and it goes back to its origninal settings, instead of saving the new settings.
im moving over to VDSL.But now i cant open any ports on the E4200 no mather what i do.It worked with the previous modem, but now i cant open anything. all the ports seems to be closes, 80, 21 etc, and the ports i manually forrward.The previous modem was a ZyXEL P-2602HWT-F3, and the new one is a ZyXEL P-2812HNU-F3.If i connect directly into the ZyXEL P-2812HNU-F3, every ports seems to be open, port 80 is open, port 21 is open, but not on the E4200, and yes, i have tried open the FTP ports.I have tried the 30/30/30 reset on the E4200.
I have the E4200v1 and if I remember correctly I think its on 1.0.0.3 (cant remember because I went back to my wndr3700). I had not had any problems with it until yesterday when I returned to playing The Hunter (first time playing it on the E4200) and my girl hollered upstairs saying that she lost connection on the laptop. I reset the router and she reconnected and I went back to playing the game. 2 minutes later she hollers again. I stopped playing the game to try to figure out the wireless issue and everything looked normal. No more loss connections for the next few hours..........Until I started playing the game again...so I took it out of line and put the 3700 back in line and played the game for hours with no connection drop to the wireless. Is this a knows issue on the 4200? Are some setting changes necessary to game on it? btw I was playing the game wired and it didnt effect the connection at all?
I've tried a number of ways to re-configure my E4200v1 router with Cisco Connect but without luck. I don't have the CD so I've downloaded it from this website and it loads and installs and launches but ultimately can never find the router. Part of the problem may be because I have a Verizon Fios Router already at 192.168.1.1. with the wifi and DHCP turned off, in favor of an Asus router which works well. I have tried taking the Cisco Connect installation off the wifi and onto a wifi through the E4200 Wan or Lan ports, but it still can't be found. I am able to get into the E4200v1 setting manually this way and to change its ip address to avoid the Fios Router conflict. But nothing works. Maybe I need to put the e4200 in the 192.168.1.1 range instead of the Asus 192.168.5.1 range? [code]
The E4200v1 does not play nice with the 4s on iOS6!!It will not work at all with Wireless N mode or mixed mode settings. If I have it on these settings, the iPhone will connect (slowly) to the router, but access content on the browser takes forever (or not at all).I have to set the router to G only nmode, but obviously this is no good for the rest of my devices!
I've had an E4200v1 in use as my home's main router for about 3 mos. And while many others have reported disconnect problems (I think), I myself have never seen any. My router and its N & G wifi networks have been rock solid. Until yesterday that is.Now all of a sudden, most of my family is complaining about wifi disconnects, slow speeds, etc. (My primary PC is hard-wired so I don't see any problems whatsoever... the problem apears to be wifi-only)And the Apple devices (OSX & IOS) seem to have the most severe problems. But Windows devices have also seen problems, just not as critical.Also, it's worth noting that I've been running 1.0.04 the whole time, without any problems... it seemed relatively stable to me. That is until yesterday.
I've bounced the router, I've disabled/re-enabled Wireless G network. I've switched mode from "mixed" to "G-only" back to "mixed". I've changed the channel width back to the default of Auto (I had been using 20Mhz), which increased my throughput (as measured by Qcheck) so I'm leaving it "Auto".
So I bought this new E4200v1 about a week ago and since yesterday it started dropping connection terribly. After checking Cisco Connect it seemed to have a Firmware update which I did and after it was done I decided to do a factory reset since I read somewhere that it works. When the router came back on for a second I saw an unsecured SSID, but then it turned into an SSID called panelist-ssid with a password called google-4panel which is definitely not the default. Also, when I try to access the router webpage to configure it, the password is not the old one nor the default Username: blank Password: admin credentials. I am currently connected to it via the button on the back that allows me to connect without password. Another thing is that I uninstalled Cisco Connect and when I try to install at 25% it says it cannot find my router and ask for SSID + password which I input yet it fails.
i have a little annoying problem with my E4200. V1 with the latest 04 fw. It seems, that after many hours of downloading at full speed (only one torrent at a time) the speed goes down, and up again, and becoming unstable. My max download speed is 1.5 Mb/s, and it can drop from that, to 50 kb/s, and then up again. and i have no internet access when that happens, but it only last 10-20 seconds and then its back again. Sometimes i get that yellow warning sign on the taskbar which says "No Internet Access" but not always.
Seems like its happening after many hours of downloading at full speed. im on the latest firmware, have tried different channels, 20 Mhz only on Channel Width, different names on the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz channels.. i use the 2.4Ghz channel btw. Otherwise its stable, and i have had no problems while gaming online.
I have four E4200's doing the same. I have FiOS 15M download and 5M upload. As soon as QoS is turned on the upload speed drops down to usually 300k and it never exceeds 1M.At the same time any VPN connection gets dropped often.I also configured one E4200v1 as router and the second E4200v1 as Access Point (HDCP off) hardwired to the first one.Any VPN connection gets dropped when changing location. I.e. if VPN was established with the router, the connection gets dropped when in the location where AP is -- and the other way around too. There is no coverage gap between the two locations, to the contrary - they do overlap heavily.On Dec 21, 2011 the level 2 Linksys/Cisco people advised that they will forward the two issues to engineering and that resolution will be within 24-48 hours.
I've got an E4200v1 running 1.0.04 firmware with guest access enabled. I'd like to find out who is logged in using the guest access. Is there a way to get a list of the DHCP clients on the guest network? I'm able to do this for the non-guest access via the WEB interface's Status->Local Network->DHCP Clients Table page. But I can't find a similar table for the guest network.
I set up EA6500. All kinds of problems with anything on the 2.4 MHz band. My wireless desktop on the 5.0 MHz band was flawless. So I ran Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector (freeware). The router is transmitting two 2.4 MHz signals! One is the SSID I set up and named. The other one is identical in every way except that the BSSID is slightly different. It is a non-broadcasted SSID that shows up on every device as "Other Network." I was on the phone with Cisco Support tonite, and they were great as usual but had no answer. If you change the channel on the 2.4 MHz band, the shadow network also changes to the same channel (this blew the Tech's mind). We reset the router to factory settings and started over. They are calling me back tomorrow. This router has great features on paper, but so far, it has not delivered.
What Radio Channels are available for selection when operating the EA4500 in Wireless-N (5 GHz) mode only? I need to find a router that can be specifically set on channel 120 in the UK
So anyone can use this channels without any restrictions and without register this AP.So how can i use this channels on my newely purchased EA3500? from drop down menus only low range is available.ive tried 2 different FW from linksys site (Cisco FW and Smart WiFi FW) in both i cant use this frequences .Also for this router no alternate FW available because inside Marvell chipsets (im not understood correctly why, but i suppose all about "closed FW").Also ive tried to change timezones (in hope that this range is magically appear), but magic not happened. So i have question: why i cant use this 5gHz range when its legal in my country?May be Linksys support watch on this problem and release new firmware for Russia with support of this channels?Also i knew that E3200 have this range enabled on default FW, but not on EA3500.
I have read various forum postings saying to get the best performance from a wifi router you have to use channel 149 or greater and that 36-48 have a weaker signal strength and thus less range/speed.I live in New Zealand and when I select the wireless channel drop list for the 5GHz band it only lists 5 options - Auto (dfs), 36, 40, 44 and 48. I have read forum posts of people stating you should switch to 149 or greater and I have seen screenshots showing the drop list with 149 selected. But I don't have that option.If I check the Status > Wireless page it shows that channel 36 is being used (for Auto).Am I doing something wrong? Do E3000's in this part of the world not support 149 etc?I spoke in a live chat to a support rep who told me that all E3000's are the same everywhere in the world and there was little to no difference in firmware between them. I was also told that channels 36-48 are high gain channels and so there is no need for the other channels, which contradicts other articles I have read which state 36-48 are weaker channels.
Using firmware 1.0.01, has anyone successfully gotten the E4200 to bond two channels using the 2.4GHz spectrum? I just can't get it to bond. I assume it's a firmware issue, yet to be fixed. I've tried settings Auto (20 or 40), and nada. It has never bonded. The 5 GHz bonds fine. There are a few interferences by the neighbours wifi, but nothing substantial that should prevent bonding. I have this router at school too, and the same thing happens there, with the same firmware, so I doubt it's an interference issue. I'm using WPA2 Personal encryption. I tried auto channel, and setting channels to 1, 3, 5, and 11, nothing changed.
I know I'm not bonded because A. Max link speed is ~144Mbps, and B. using a program like inSSIDer tells me I'm only using one channel on the 2.4Ghz spec.
I have a WUSB600N version 1, with the newest driver (offical 3.0.10.0), my Windows 7 Ultimate installation has the proper regional settings, and within the driver setting the Linksys device has the correct country region (#1, 1-13).However, I am unable to scan and connect to channels higher than 11. as tested with the network manager in windows plus inSSID scanner. My other devices on the same network see the higher channels.
The only thing I notice now is that channels 12 and 13 do not work properly. Setting the router to channels 12 and 13 basically sets the channel to something in the 1 - 11 range as seen by inSSIDer. This could be because the firmware I installed is the US version, which only has channels 1 - 11, but the EU version has channels 1 - 13. Normally this wouldn't be a problem but because there are a lot of wireless signals where I live, channels 1 - 11 are quite congested, so channel 13 was quite useful to me.I don't suppose anyone has a EU version of the WAG160NV2 2.00.17 firmware do they?Channels 12 and 13 worked fine with the EU version of the WAG160NV2 2.00.20 firmware but of course only at 2Mbps.
I recently had to reset my router, back to factory default. The problem is after setting it up again and everything it's still somehow broadcasting the old network name. Alongside the new one.
I am testing a Cisco 1552 and cannot seem to set it to use the 40 MHz channels. In the controller GUI is is set to use 40 MHz channels under DCA for 802.11a but when I go into the CLI and show the config of the AP it shows the channel width to be 20 MHz. If I try to change the channel width through the CLI I get "radio is not disable or ap not set to customize" or something like that. The radio is disabled globally and locally. Is there a way to set the AP or radio to a "customize" mode?
What prompted this was I was testing the throughput on it and can only get a 130 mbps data rate connection to it. The data sheet says it will support 300 mbps with the 40 mhz channel so I was trying to test it atteh higher rate.The HW is a Cisco 4402 with 7.0.230 software on it, 1552E.
I've got a deployment of 1142N APs using a pair of 5508 controllers running 7.3.101.0. We're in the United States and the country is set to "US". I've added the UNII-2 channels to Auto-RF on the controllers via "config advanced 802.11a channel add 100" and so forth. According to the output of " show advanced 802.11a channel", I've enabled every 5 GHz channel that's legal for use in the US:
My confusion comes because the automatic assignment of 5 GHz channels is heavily biased toward just a few of them, with most of the available space being ignored. Here are the 5 GHz channel assignments from a large, single-story building with 31 APs:
(qty 2) 36 (qty 6) 40 (qty 5) 44 [ code].....
A total of nine channels are used (two of them only once) while twelve other channels are ignored completely. Many of these APs are close enough to hear one another, so assigning seven of them to ch. 48 makes no sense.
Looking at my campus as a whole, I've got numerous APs using channels 36, 40, 44, 48, 149, 153, 157, 161, and 165. I've got at least one each using channels 52, 56, 60, 64, 112, 116, and 132. Nothing at all is on 100, 104, 108, 136, and 140. I am using 20 MHz wide channels, between, so all are independent.
Can anyone shed light on A) why my distribution is so heavily skewed toward the first nine channels, and B) how I can learn whether certain channels are being avoided due to the presence of radar, etc, on the frequency? I'd like to take full advantage of 5 GHz by having as little channel re-use as possible.
We have a Cisco 2504 controller and approximately 35 AP's. Some of the AP's are located directly above each other (on another floor). When I run a basic annalyzer, it appears that there is some adjacent AP traffic, the controller has some of the close AP's with the same channel, so there is some RF interferance. The AP's currently are all setup for "G" and majority of the AP's are 1200 series, most of them are 1242's. Should and can the AP's be set with static channels so that there is no adjacent signals? If so where in the controller can that be done?
Couple questions on setting channels on Cisco 1552s. First off almost all locations are fibered and set as RAPs. It doesn't allow me to set the channel assignment method to "global" to use DCA. It says it can't be done for a mesh backhaul AP. Is there any way around this? Next, when the channel is set to "custom" there are only 5 channels listed to choose from in the UNII-3 band. The spec sheet on the 1552 shows it supports other frequencies in the UNII-2 and UNII-2 extended range. Why can't I select those channels?
I am looking into upgrading a customers wireless network and they are looking at using a few 1240 access points for both internal and external connections. Their question is can one access point support both channels simultaneously? They would like to connect an antenna on the inside of the building on the 5ghz channel and another externally on the 2.4ghz channel.
My wireless network consists mainly of approximately 1400 AP's 900 x 3602's, 500 x 3502's,The majority of these AP's especially the new ones have been manually optimised for channel and power settings. We paid an external surveyor to survey and optimise the AP's.
We have a few 5505 WLC's and the channel assignment method is set to "Freeze" ,My question is, if someone invokes a channel update on a WLC, will the WLC override the original manual channel setting if the WLC thinks it should be changed? And will the original setting be lost forever unless a restore is performed from the WLC Database?
