What does the wireless Disconnect button really do?

I accidentally hit the Disconnect button for one of our essential WiFi clients:


... and of course that client was kicked off that WiFi network but after that point that client could never again rejoin the network. In order to fix the problem (within a 24 hour time frame) I had to delete and create the access point for that radio.

My question at the time, and still today: What exactly does that Disconnect button really do? I looked for the disconnected client in all the tabs for that radio interface including Mac Filter and didn't see it there. Maybe I missed it, and that would have explained why our MAC address was blacklisted from that point... but if that were the default behaviour, then why is this Github issue asking for it as a feature request?

Since this network & that client are used in our production workflow, I'd like to get an answer in advance rather than experimenting again. Specifically I'd like to know:

  1. What effects (exactly) in LuCI and the OpenWRT config files can be seen after hitting the Disconnect button for a currently connected client?
  2. If that button truly is only for a temporary disconnect, as suggested in the Github issue, is there any common feature of the Android client itself that would discourage or prevent that client from being able to join that wireless network after getting Disconnected in that way?

The radio settings except for the generic things like SSID and PSK are the same as the OpenWRT defaults.

OpenWrt 19.07.3 r11063-85e04e9f46 - LuCI openwrt-19.07 branch git-20.136.49537-fb2f363

Trying it on 19.07.6, it looks like only a temporary ban implemented with a ubus del_client call to hostapd. The banned client's MAC is held in RAM in the running instance of hostapd, so restarting wireless removes the ban. The wireless config file is not modified.

Of course if you really want to know exactly what a certain button does, the source code is available.

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Thanks, that's a good enough explanation for me :grimacing: ... I had tried restarting wireless on the clients but not on the router, mainly because of that production issue. Also a sufficient & helpful explanation why we never found anything in the config files or screens.

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