TP-Link Archer A7 v5 - Doesn't work with multiple android

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
1

I have been trying to troubleshoot this one for a while but I have never gotten things to work as desired.

I have 2 TP-Link Archer A7 v5 in my home and they each have their own set of wifi networks to avoid collisions. Things work fine if I only connect 1 android phone to the wifi network. Once I connect a second android phone to the same wifi network then 1 or the other of them will drop wifi or state that 'wifi network has no internet access'.

I have tried this with both 2.4 and 5ghz and I seem to run into the same problem. I have turned off disconnect on inactivity and I have disabled fast transition per a few other posts that I have read but this problem still persists.

2

is one of them set up as dumb APs ?
if not, have you got two ISPs ?

3

Both are setup as dumb aps with a pfsense device doing the bulk of the work.

4

Hi

one very wild idea

maybe your DHCP server which serving vlan for android wifi network is missconfigured?
maybe only one DHCP lease is set up ? so second device will kick off first? or similar ...

5

I checked the dhcp configurations for each vlan and they each have a full /24 block of allocated.

The other odd thing is that I can put phones on the same AP on different wireless networks and they still kick each other off. For example one phone is on the upstairs "guest" network and the other one is on the upstairs "internal" network.

I don't have multiple laptops or an iphone to test with but I haven't seen this issue when mixing the laptop or the phone on the same AP.

Both phones are on the 5ghz network if that makes a difference. I have wpa2-psk setup and I have the same network names for both the 2.4 and 5 ghz networks. I do have different network names on the 2 aps (upstairs and downstairs). I'm not sure if that is a factor but this has persisted across multiple openwrt releases.

At the moment I am stumped and I am sure that I may have a setting misconfigured but I don't know where to start.

6

by default when connecting to wifi on android, it randomizes the mac address. Could it be that both of your phones are randomizing to same mac address? Check that.

If nothing else seems to fix, best way would be to start fresh by resetting all config and setting everything up from scratch.

I also run like 4 Archer A7v5. Everything works fine on mine.

7

let's see the configuration for each of these A7 devices:

Please copy the output of the following commands and post it here using the "Preformatted text </> " button:
grafik
Remember to redact passwords, MAC addresses and any public IP addresses you may have:

cat /etc/config/network
cat /etc/config/wireless
cat /etc/config/dhcp
cat /etc/config/firewall