Network Connectivity Issues with NEEO Remtoe

[PumpUpVolume]

4 minutes ago, PumpUpVolume said:

Changing to these settings did not work. The NEEO is presenting huge lag with the new settings. Other devices still work fine. Can still stream video from my SkyBell and still get >250MBPS through the WAP to the ISP. All devices work great except the NEEO, which is terrible.

And, yes, I did reboot the WAP and then the NEEO after changing settings.

[SpencerT]

6 minutes ago, PumpUpVolume said:

Changing to these settings did not work. The NEEO is presenting huge lag with the new settings. Other devices still work fine. Can still stream video from my SkyBell and still get >250MBPS through the WAP to the ISP. All devices work great except the NEEO, which is terrible.

Did you reboot the radio and the neeo?

[PumpUpVolume]

1 minute ago, SpencerT said:

Did you reboot the radio and the neeo?

I first rebooted the radio and then I rebooted the NEEO.

[PumpUpVolume]

This is all that I see on the NEEO setting screen - there is nothing about WiFi sleep mode...

[PumpUpVolume]

Another one of the errors that I see is "Page Error". See attached screen shot of a "Page Error" after changing the WAP settings and rebooting both the WAP and the NEEO.

[PumpUpVolume]

I also get a "Loading Error" frequently; see attached.

[PumpUpVolume]

And, I see this spinning wheel all the time - it often stays present for long pauses like 10 - 15 seconds before something else happens

[SpencerT]

Pick a different channel.

Is the wifi enabled on your bell hub? If so, did you name the Netgear 2.4 network the same?

[PumpUpVolume]

15 minutes ago, SpencerT said:

Pick a different channel.

Is the wifi enabled on your bell hub? If so, did you name the Netgear 2.4 network the same?

The radios that are built into the Bell MTS Home Hub are turned OFF (as previously noted). The Home Hub sits utility room. My WAP is perfectly centrally located and in very close proximity to where the NEEO is used.

I can try a different channel, but that seems counterintuitive given that my SkyBell streams video on the current channel and the SkyBell is located outdoors, furthest from the WAP720. If any device were prone to have an issue with the WiFi signal, it would be the SkyBell.

[PumpUpVolume]

Also note that my location is not very polluted from neighbouring access WAPs. My iPhone shows my two networks (2.4 & 5.2) and one other network. Sometimes others will appear briefly, but there are only two houses that are within proximity to really have the potential to cause an issue. And I don't see any issues.

[PumpUpVolume]

OK... I just noticed that the WAP didn't take the settings changer earlier. I've re-changed the settings and am retesting. Will post again when I've been able to test the NEEO. The SkyBell still streams with the new settings.

 

I also need to make a correction to one thing I said before. My phone was on the 5.2 network when I ran the OOKLA test before. On channel 11 I get only 40 MBPS once I force the phone to the 2.4 network.

[PumpUpVolume]

I ran tests with three channels using my iPhone and OOKLA. Here are the results:

Channel 1: 52 Mbps

Channel 6: 60 Mbps

Channel 11: 40 Mbps

[PumpUpVolume]

The system is now running with the modified setting:

• Channel 6 (fixed)
• 20 MHz channel width (unchanged)
• Guard interval = long - 800 ns
• Full output power (unchanged, but fixed, not modulating)

so, the only real changes are channel from 3 --> 6 and Guard Interval from auto --> long - 800 ns

Both the WAP and the NEEO have been rebooted and for now the NEEO is behaving. Now let's wait and see whether these changes have made a difference.

I wish I had documented changes I made previously because the channel may have been set up this way previously; it might have been switched to 3 in an effort to solve the problem.

[dw886]

You're getting channel interference on 2.4GHz - a networking problem that's being exposed by the Neeo. 

Just because some other device that's on 2.4 is working well doesn't mean that it's not an interference issue - the Neeo may be closer to the interfering device that's operating on the 2.4GHz band, and the skybell (that's outside) may be further from the offending device negating the interference (and allowing it to communicate better with the wifi).  As someone else already noted, for 2.4GHz, only channels 1, 6, or 11 should be used and a max width of 20Mhz to prevent channel overlap.  Remember 2.4GHz has a ton of things operating on it outside of Wifi (microwaves, baby monitors, bluetooth, cordless phones, zigbee, wireless keyboards/mice, lots of hub/spoke devices like Blink cameras, etc), so just because you only see one SSID broadcasting doesn't mean that you have clean 2.4GHz airspace - a site survey would tell you what's all running in that range - right now we're just guessing. 

If trial and error is the approach rather than doing a proper scan / site survey with something like an etherscope, then you're doing the correct things (moving to channel 6).  If that doesn't work, I'd go to 11.

 

Without completely going into the technical weeds here, you can see in this example channel scan chart that in my example network there's something sitting too wide (40mhz) in the 1-6 range, so my airspace around channel 11 is cleaner - no idea what yours looks like without more diagnostic tools.

[RAV]

(also, if you can setup a DMZ in your ISP router, than you can add your own router and not deal with bridging the ISP one)

[Ron S]

I've tried about every possibility to make the NEEO not lose connectivity.   The only thing that worked is moving the access point close to the remote.   The bottom line is the chipset in the NEEO is poor and replacing it is the best option.  Just wish I didn't have 3 of these things.   Apparently this has been resolved with the NEEO replacement, we'll see.

 

[cshepard]

FWIW: we have a client with ten Neeos. He started out with 4 and liked them so much he added another 6. We have several others with between four & six of them in their systems. All these systems are using all UniFi networks (router, switches, & APs). We rarely have any trouble with them.

[SpencerT]

Plop me into the "no connectivity issues with NEEO" camp. I have to wonder if there were different revisions using different chipsets. Seems like everything I read is either it works awesome or it doesn't work at all. 

I'm on ubiquiti, 4 AP's. 

[PumpUpVolume]

13 hours ago, dw886 said:

You're getting channel interference on 2.4GHz - a networking problem that's being exposed by the Neeo. 

Just because some other device that's on 2.4 is working well doesn't mean that it's not an interference issue - the Neeo may be closer to the interfering device that's operating on the 2.4GHz band, and the skybell (that's outside) may be further from the offending device negating the interference (and allowing it to communicate better with the wifi).  As someone else already noted, for 2.4GHz, only channels 1, 6, or 11 should be used and a max width of 20Mhz to prevent channel overlap.  Remember 2.4GHz has a ton of things operating on it outside of Wifi (microwaves, baby monitors, bluetooth, cordless phones, zigbee, wireless keyboards/mice, lots of hub/spoke devices like Blink cameras, etc), so just because you only see one SSID broadcasting doesn't mean that you have clean 2.4GHz airspace - a site survey would tell you what's all running in that range - right now we're just guessing. 

If trial and error is the approach rather than doing a proper scan / site survey with something like an etherscope, then you're doing the correct things (moving to channel 6).  If that doesn't work, I'd go to 11.

 

Without completely going into the technical weeds here, you can see in this example channel scan chart that in my example network there's something sitting too wide (40mhz) in the 1-6 range, so my airspace around channel 11 is cleaner - no idea what yours looks like without more diagnostic tools.

I did a site survey with inSSIDer when I originally installed the network, but that was a long ago and much could have changed. The only reason why I have repeated that recently is all the computers I own are desktop units, which are, for obvious reasons, a poor tool for conducting a WiFi survey. I'm working at borrowing or buying a notebook so that I can do another site survey. I know what needs to be done, I just lack the required hardware tool at the moment.

[PumpUpVolume]

10 hours ago, RAV said:

(also, if you can setup a DMZ in your ISP router, than you can add your own router and not deal with bridging the ISP one)

I explored the DMZ approach in great detail at one point and hit a wall. I'd need to go back to my notes to confirm, but I think the issue I ran into is this... The connection to the ISP is currently negotiated by the Home Hub 3000. I cannot see the account name and password that it uses to negotiate the connection with the ISP. I think that the ISP recognized some hard programmed identifier in the Home Hub 3000 - there is no place where an account and password is visible or can be entered; however that works is entirely hidden. If I set up another router in the DMZ then I need to have the credentials to negotiate the WAN connection to the ISP. My ISP refuses to give those credentials to me. I did find instructions on how to get this information for the Home Hub 3000 if you have device issued by Bell in Ontario. However, the Home Hub 3000 issued is Manitoba is different hardware and different firmware and none of the Ontario instructions apply to the Manitoba configuration. I have not been able to find a Manitoba version of those instructions. Thus, I hit the wall because I was unsuccessful at figuring out the login credentials. I did manage to talk to an empathic tech at Bell MTS who said to me "look, I can see you have a good technical understanding and I am confident that you will figure out how to make the connection if you plug away at it long enough. I'm prohibited from telling you how to do it, but you can probably eventually figure out on your own. However, I'm cautioning you, you will have other other problems and when you call us we will be able to see what you've done and we won't support you until you set your router back to the default configuration. We have other customers that have attempted the DMZ approach and they all have problems and we won't provide support to fix those problems." At that point I flew the white flag on the idea of a DMZ approach. If anyone on the forum knows how to set up the DMZ on a MB Bell MTS Home Hub 3000 and obtain the correct login credential, I'm interested in that information.

In full candour, I doubt this is a router issue. It might be a WAP issue. I'm not about to invest energy into inserting a second router unless there is reason to believe that it is a router issue.

Keep in mind, traffic between my NEEO and the EA3 processor does NOT travel through the router. That traffic goes from the NEEO --> WAP --> Smart Switch --> EA3 Processor (and the reverse). The router is the least involved actor. My router does NAT and WAN and not much more. I'm not using the radios on the router and on the LAN side there is basically a single gig line to the switch.

[PumpUpVolume]

2 hours ago, cshepard said:

FWIW: we have a client with ten Neeos. He started out with 4 and liked them so much he added another 6. We have several others with between four & six of them in their systems. All these systems are using all UniFi networks (router, switches, & APs). We rarely have any trouble with them.

That is interesting given that someone else commented that they simply couldn't get the NEEO to work with ubiquiti products. I wonder what the difference is between the configurations?

[RyanE]

15 minutes ago, PumpUpVolume said:

That is interesting given that someone else commented that they simply couldn't get the NEEO to work with ubiquiti products. I wonder what the difference is between the configurations?

Probably Wifi Roaming.

The Neeos work best when they are setup to connect to a single 2.4GHz Access point.

RyanE

[PumpUpVolume]

1 minute ago, RyanE said:

Probably Wifi Roaming.

The Neeos work best when they are setup to connect to a single 2.4GHz Access point.

RyanE

Well, there may be more than one issue in play, but in my case I only have a single 2.4GHz radio in the house and the NEEO can't stay connected to it and/or there is signal interference. The WAP is located within feet of where the NEEO is used.

I do understand that cross channel interference is a bigger problem that co-channel interference, so maybe moving from channel 3 to channel 6 will be a solution for me, but too early to tell at this point.

[dw886]

FWIW, I'm on a Ubiquiti setup with 5 WAPs and multiple NEEOs and don't have these issues. 

 

It's hard to dissect what's going on in your environment without having some diagnostics.  If you have multiple remotes with the same issue, I'd lean towards it being a wifi issue.  If it was a single remote, then I'd think that it was the remote and I'd start by swapping that Neeo with one in another room.  If you have a wifi mapper it may give you more information on what's on the band.  I was just looking through the logs from one of our Etherscopes to find an example - here's one where we were at a customer's home working on the network when they turned on the microwave.  The interference spanned channels 4-12 - since it was a microwave, it was short lived - we likely just caught the end of it:

 

For those on UBNT hardware, if you decide to lock it to an AP just toggle this under settings on the client - just remember that this carries some risk because if this AP goes down, this setting will keep the client offline because the client will not connect to another AP (also won't roam if you carry the NEEO to the other side of the house):

 

Interestingly enough, it does look like the MAC addresses on the NEEOs changed at some point, pointing to a difference in WiFi hardware.  Here's 3 NEEOs currently connected - the middle one is significantly newer than the top and bottom ones - although the signal that they are receiving is not significantly different.  The one with the poorest signal is in the poorest location relative to the access points:

[PumpUpVolume]

4 minutes ago, dw886 said:

FWIW, I'm on a Ubiquiti setup with 5 WAPs and multiple NEEOs and don't have these issues. 

 

It's hard to dissect what's going on in your environment without having some diagnostics.  If you have multiple remotes with the same issue, I'd lean towards it being a wifi issue.  If it was a single remote, then I'd think that it was the remote and I'd start by swapping that Neeo with one in another room.  If you have a wifi mapper it may give you more information on what's on the band.  I was just looking through the logs from one of our Etherscopes to find an example - here's one where we were at a customer's home working on the network when they turned on the microwave.  The interference spanned channels 4-12 - since it was a microwave, it was short lived - we likely just caught the end of it:

 

For those on UBNT hardware, if you decide to lock it to an AP just toggle this under settings on the client - just remember that this carries some risk because if this AP goes down, this setting will keep the client offline because the client will not connect to another AP (also won't roam if you carry the NEEO to the other side of the house):

 

Interestingly enough, it does look like the MAC addresses on the NEEOs changed at some point, pointing to a difference in WiFi hardware.  Here's 3 NEEOs currently connected - the middle one is significantly newer than the top and bottom ones - although the signal that they are receiving is not significantly different.  The one with the poorest signal is in the poorest location relative to the access points:

As indicated previously, I will conduct a new WiFi site survey as soon as I can obtain a notebook PC; I presently have access/use of several computers, but they are all either desktops or they are locked down such that I can't install a sniffer app.

I have only one NEEO and only one 2.4 GHz radio in the house, so I don't have the option to try swapping between rooms, etc. This is one remote, one WAP environment.

I can say for certain that the issue is not something like microwave oven interference in our case. The problem is present when the microwave is not in use. When our NEEO stops responding properly it stays in that state for hours, days, or weeks at a time. I'm never quite sure what gets it working again, but is not simply some intermittent interference issue. That would not explain that observed pattern. If it is an interference issue, the source of the interference must be something that operates pretty continuously over periods of days, which does not include a microwave oven. Our cordless phones do not use the 2.4GHz band; we have a single model of cordless phone in the house and it is the 5 GHz type. We don't have any other remote systems in the house and certainly not ones used on any continuous basis. If there is an interference issue, about the only practical source of such would be the neighboring houses on either of two sides; that is a valid possibility.

At the moment, I've got my fingers crossed that the root cause of the problem was having the WAP on channel 3 and there was cross-channel interference from the WiFi in the neighbors house. Evidently, I will get more insight into this when I can conduct a site survey - I'm looking into borrowing a notebook to do this. I know what needs to be done - I have conducted site surveys before - I just don't presently have a notebook computer I can use for this purpose. The NEEO has responded well since I got the WAP reconfigured to a standard channel and extended the guard interval. I'm not celebrating yet, however, as sometimes the problem goes dormant for days or even weeks.