Arcadyan, IPv4, and general flakiness

[BC_EZ]

Hi everyone,

Since Christmas (idea: several new devices on wifi?) our network had been behaving oddly. It's an Arcadyan with four boosts. Also of note, the router and discs are all on timers to reboot at 4am - this seemed to help in the early days, years ago.

My first connection of the day (iPad) usually can only connect to Google sites. I learned this was because the IPv4 DHCP address wasn't assigned, and only IPv6 traffic was getting through. I can usually nudge this by editing and saving (no changes) any of the DHCP allotted addresses on the router. (Oh yeah - the setting of DHCP addresses to manual has helped a bit, but there's a max of ten.)

So now, when the other devices aren't connecting, usually due to no IPv4 address, the DHCP nudge seems to work most of the time, but I can't do it from the app, and without the IPv4 address I can't browse to the router from any mobile device; I have to use a wired connection.

So some questions:
- anyone else solve their IPv4 inconsistencies somehow?
- any ideas on how to simplify the DHCP "nudge"?
- it running 60-70 devices too much on this setup? (5 teenage kids, tech geek dad)

I hate the idea of splitting my network, but I'm considering moving to a 3rd party prosumer mesh next.

[xray · Accepted solution]

I suspect the high number of devices may be stretching the limits of resources somewhere on the router. While the address range for DHCP is adequate the memory for lists and tables to track 70 devices may be breaking the firmware.

The fact that the address reservation list has a max of 10 indicates the firmware developer wasn't anticipating 70 devices and therefore I doubt the router was ever tested with anywhere near that number.

If you have a large number of IoT devices or entertainment devices (TV, Blu-ray players,etc.) that don't need to connect to other devices on your LAN then consider offloading them to a separate router bridged on the Arcadyan.

[BC_EZ]

Thanks for your reply and ideas!

My only hesitation for separating the IOT things is that many need to be on the same local network to connect to each other and to the mobile devices. I know some need it just for setup, but it's hard to know which, and a pain to start over.

I've wondered if using the onboard Smart devices separate SSID would help with the load balancing, but my first tested weren't successful - devices went dark.

So I'm now considering the separate router for all things wireless, retiring the boosts, and keeping the Arcadyan just for the STBs.

[BC_EZ]

Update: things for substantially more did when I stopped rebooting the main Arcadyan router daily. I've only had to reboot it a could times since, when the discs get flaky, but it's rare.

I want to blame a slow DHCP address assignment process. But who knows, there's no logs I can access.