MR46 and RTL8812AU compatibility issues

[mledesma]

We have equipment that uses wireless adapters with the RTL8812AU chipset, and have MR46 APs across different sites. The MR46 APs are on firmware 27.6. The wireless adapters have no issues with other APs, and the MR46 APs have no issues with other wireless devices. When these are connected together, the signal strength appears to be good but the wireless connection drops prematurely. 

MR46 2.4 GHz, channel 11: With the RTL8812AU it connects at 32dB signal strength, drops off around 29-31dB.
MR46 5 GHz, channel 112: With the RTL8812AU it connects at 39dB signal strength, drops off around 36dB. With different settings (ch40 and wider channels), Windows shows the link speed is 585-866 Mbps. It suddenly will drop/disconnect when moving "out of range" at a similar signal strength, although wifi analyzer software shows there's still a good 5 GHz signal.

The same issue happens on different channels and with any device the wireless adapters are plugged into (such as a Windows laptop). The result of this is that the equipment fails to connect or reconnect to the APs intermittently. It seems like it's trying to connect to the 5 GHz network since the wireless adapter can see it, but for some reason can't connect, then will either try to keep connecting until it fails, or try to connect to the 2.4 GHz network (usually successfully since it has a further range).

[ww]

What is the minimal  bitrate  you set at the wireless profile? 

On 20mhz at 5ghz it works?

I would also say make sure to run the latest driver but if i look it up its a driver dated from 2018 so i guess you already use that.

[mledesma]

Minimum bitrate is set to 11 Mbps

I tested on 2.4 GHz with 20 MHz channels and 5 GHz with 20, 40, and 80 MHz channels, same issue occurs on all.

[Bruce]

I’d start by setting your minimum bit rate to 12Mbps, that excludes all 802.11b clients (not that there probably are any), but is also more commonly supported as the minimum across clients.

[mledesma]

After changing the minimum bit rate to 12Mbps for 2.4GHz and 5GHz, the device says it doesn't make a connection (says Authentication problem), but the MR46 shows this:

Connecting a Windows computer with the same RTL8812AU adapter results in Windows saying "Can't connect to this network". It doesn't show up in the Current clients list.

[cmr]

@mledesma do you have band steering turned on where the AP will try to push clients that connect to the 2.4GHz radio over to the 5GHz radio?  If so try turning that off.  Also if you don't need bonjour forwarding try turning that off as well to see if it helps.

[mledesma]

Band steering was turned back on today while we were doing additional testing (previously had the AP set to 5 GHz only), just turned it off. Bonjour forward is disabled.

[cmr]

@mledesma have you tried setting the AP to 2.4 GHz only (just for testing)?

[ErikaT]

Do you have Wifi 6 enabled? I'd suggest trying turning that off.

[PhilipDAth]

I'm not familiar with this specific WiFi chipset, but the most common cause of this is Windows power saving.  Set Windows power saving to "Maximum Performance" for the WiFi NIC.

You can also configure this from the command line with:

powercfg /SETDCVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT 19cbb8fa-5279-450e-9fac-8a3d5fedd0c1 12bbebe6-58d6-4636-95bb-3217ef867c1a 0
powercfg /SETACVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT 19cbb8fa-5279-450e-9fac-8a3d5fedd0c1 12bbebe6-58d6-4636-95bb-3217ef867c1a 0

[mledesma]

Thanks all for your responses and assistance so far.

Set the AP to 2.4 GHz only - wireless adapter connects without an issue and performance is acceptable, however it has the same issue as before where the connection drops prematurely when the signal is "weak" (25-30dB on 2.4 GHz). 

Disabled Wifi 6 (had it disabled but enabled it this week again) when I set the AP to 2.4 only

For the computer I'm testing the wireless adapter in, I applied the power settings through cmd (most power settings are missing from the Power Options window, might be due to how Dell configured the computer). If it helps, the same issue occurs on the equipment we're using this 8812AU adapter in, which runs Android.

We're still testing this, but it looks like we're seeing a similar issue with a different Realtek adapter as well - 8821AE (802.11ac PCI-E). This one is in an Open Pluggable Specification (OPS) computer with an i7-7500U and Windows 10 Pro.

I have an 8812BU USB wireless adapter that I've tested in a Windows computer and that does not seem to have the same issues that the two other Realtek adapters have.