Revisiting this old issue with recent equipment. I have a new RPi 4B and a new stock 3A RPi branded power supply for it. I've staged it with a USB Wifi A-C dongle and the same issue arises here. Whether it is the USB Wifi or the onboard WiFi adapter, they both have connect then disconnect issues. When restarted, the adapters will connect to the uplink router and then disconnect and (in Luci) subsequently display as disabled.
MUCH (oh yeah) reading has been done to troubleshoot without success. Any help would be greately appreciated.
I moved your post into a new thread because the old one may not be relevant anymore (it was 3 years old -- a lot has changed). Further, this will keep things specific to your situation.
Let's start with this: What is the purpose of your Pi4B? Are you trying to use this as a travel router? A wifi extender? something else?
@psherman -- Thank you for the quick reply. The purpose of the Pi4B is a travel router. I have the Travelmate pkg installed along with the drivers for the onboard Wifi and the USB3 one.
Just to be clear, this is among the worst options available for this purpose. There are many very good devices that are purpose built for use as a travel router -- they have far better performance and are more physically robust and convenient than a Pi. Some are pretty inexpensive, too... likely cheaper than what you are trying to use now (and if you can return any of the hardware, that would be a bonus).
We can help you, but are you sure you really want to go down this path -- it's really not a good option, but yes, it can (usually) work.
Ouch.
I was trying to use equipment that I have along with garner a learning experience with regards to openwrt with which I am quite impressed.
FWIW, I have sourced a very good case for the pi and the uplink dongle was chosen for range as the target usage is at sites where the source (uplink) WiFi is sometimes at distance.
But the quirks and limitations of the Pi (for wireless and/or travel router usage) are severe enough that this isn't the device I'd recommend using.
That said... if you want to invest the time/energy on this hardware, by all means.
Even th best cases for the Pi are going to be a bit clunky when you compare it against a proper travel router when you consider the fact that you need to use USB dongles that stick out the side of the case, etc. For example, look at the GL-Inet MT3000 or the Cudy TR3000 which have the radios inside and folding antennas.
Sure... but the downstream wifi (built into the Pi) has extremely limited performance.
Anyway, if you want to move forward, let's start by looking at your base configs (and we'll go from there):
Please connect to your OpenWrt device using ssh and copy the output of the following commands and post it here using the "Preformatted text </> " button (red circle; this works best in the 'Markdown' composer view in the blue oval):
Remember to redact passwords, VPN keys, MAC addresses and any public IP addresses you may have:
@psherman: I am unfortunately unable to perform your diagnostics and status gathering immediately due to very late local time and the fact that I need to reconnect everything to do so. I will gather the requested info and post it a.s.a.p. tomorrow. Your help is greatly appreciated (assume such when I no longer post it!). À demain as is said in places over here.
Running 2 wifi radio devices on the Pi is not recommended and may be the source of your issues. The reason is related to the power budget of the USB ports.
In theory, the TP-Link dongle consumes 500mA or less since it is USB 2.0, but the USB 3.0 Brostrend unit might consume 900mA or more (I couldn't find a verifiable datasource, though). That would potentially exceed the 1.2A total (across all 4 ports) available current from the Pi. That, in itself would explain the disconnections.
Meanwhile, other things I see:
Is this the actual config, or did you replace the IP address with something else?
Always stick with RFC1918 addresses. Using non-RFC1918 ranges may cause you major headaches.
Do not use sae-mixed as it can be the source of issues.
Use only WPA2 (psk2) or WPA3 (sae) for the encryption mode.
And oddly... all of your config files are doubled up. For example, if you look at the wireless file as you posted it here, it repeats. But with a subtle but important difference...
In the upper set, wifinet1 is assigned to radio2 and wifinet2 is assigned to radio1
In the lower set, both wifinet1 and wifinet2 are assigned to the same radio (radio2).
In the upper set, wifinet2 is disabled, but it is enabled the lower set. Vice versa for wifinet1
What is going on with that file (and the others)? Can you verify the configs as posted (specifically the doubled up issue) with the actual files on your Pi (which is the ground truth). If doubled up in the real files, that will cause a problem for sure. But not just that, the wireless file shows contradictions which will really mess things up.
You've selected pretty old USB wifi dongles -- only wifi 4. Those will probably outperform the onboard wifi, but still are quite limited. I would not recommend using multiple wifi 5 dongles, though, because of the power limitations. Maybe a single wifi 5 dongle (with dual band AP support) could work... but not worth the investment, IMO.
Going back to my earlier recommendations to seek another option for travel router hardware... the power limitations and the clunkiness of using external radio dongles is yet another reason that this is just not well suited for the task. Hopefully it is becoming more clear why I was strong in my endorsement of basically any real travel router in lieu of a Pi based solution.
Woof, my apologies! I seem to have duplicated text when exporting, scp transferring and then copying text to this forum.
My use of the non-RFC1918 addresses is something I've done for many years to help clearly isolate local/private LANs from public LANs that were then uplinked to WANs. Somehow this way, I found it easier to see what device was where.
Your suggestion of using a single wifi 5 (or 4) dongle is a surprise to me as I didn't know one could configure that dongle as BOTH a client to the public wifi LAN and an access point to my Rpi based private wifi LAN.
Regarding the power requirements....well there I'm stumped. My goal was to use the Brostrend AC3L because of its significant range capabilities. The travel router needs to sometimes uplink to public wifi's that are physically quite a distance from our location.
Using wifi 4 vs 5 wasn't really a deal-breaker for me as we found that the throughput was generally usable, many public wifi's we've visited don't yet support wifi 5 and lastly, we don't have many devices to connect to our private wi-lan.
