Hi All,

2862ac Mesh Root
AP903 Mesh Node

When the devices are in good range of each other, the AP903 joins the mesh just fine with the uplink to the Mesh Root on the 5Ghz band. However my intended positioning for the AP903 is ever so slightly beyond the range of 5Ghz. When I place the AP903 in this position it refuses to join the Mesh, even though it is still within the range of 2.4. If I take it out of Mesh mode I can link the access point as a universal repeater using the 2.4 band no problem.

So, is the AP903 able to operated Mesh in 2.4. I see in the Mesh Settings there is a setting to set the uplink Band, but the only options I have are 5Ghz or Auto. Neither of which seem to allow 2.4.

Are there some combination of settings set on the 2.4 wifi that is stopping this. The AP903 is running in factory defaults, just receiving the mesh config from the 2862ac.

I certainly don't see the options stated at the bottom of this article https://www.draytek.com/support/knowledge-base/5682

Thanks in advance. Keep safe

Graham

There is not (at present?) an option to use 2.4GHz as the mesh link as you point out. Draytek's way of selling you another AP903? (although I suspect it's really to do with bandwidth limitations)

Cheers for the reply. Thats a bit naughty of Draytek to quote in that article that the AP903 does support that setting. :x

It's worse than that - on the 912C you can apparently set 2.4GHz as the mesh link - it's just that no other Draytek mesh devices support it

Nice,

I was actually able to lower the RSSI threshold for the mesh root by using the command line dmn set rssi <threshold> so that it would actually allow the remote AP903 mesh node to join the mesh in the end in its intended location. Whilst the signal may be weak, its better than no signal. Its only a very lightly used area providing coverage to an outbuilding where I go to pick stock and need wifi coverage to read the picklist from my email

Checking through syslog, I could actually see it denying connections to the AP903 over 5G as it was below the RSSI threshold by only around 2dB.

00:1D:AA:3F:3B:00 (VigorAP802) Wireless 5GHz (Ch48) (-60dBm / 76%)
00:1D:AA:3F:D0:25 (VigorAP903) Wireless 5GHz (Ch48) (-82dBm / 20%)

Seems fairly stable now, -82 is better than nothing.

My wireless node connects at around 20% (sometimes less) and the link appears to be quite stable, so hopefully you should be OK.