Need help with debugging a weird home networking issue (Ubiquiti)

[snorbaard]

So at home I run a Ubiquiti ER-X and AP-LR and it has been running solid for a few years. Pretty basic config, haven't changed much from the basic wizard config.

Since about last night 1 or 2AM my phone Wi-Fi icon has been showing an exclamation mark and says no internet connectivity. I checked all my other smart devices, yeah no, they also don't like the Wi-Fi anymore, work laptop, check, same problem. I feel like I once had this issue before but it was just because the DHCP server assigned leases to the wireless devices that pointed to my Pihole which was giving issues at the time, it's not this problem this time, I checked and I'm giving DHCP leases with 8.8.8.8 now just to rule things out.

I tried the usual, rebooting the router, AP, heck even the ONT.

Logging in to Unifi controller shows no issues, it literally tells me everything is hunky dory, the devices are all there with their mapped static IP addresses. Yet at one point I did note some of them had weird IP addresses, which sort of eventually fixed itself again at some point.

I haven't changed anything on my router or my AP in ages.

Now at this point I just want to say that my hard-wired PC has been humming along perfectly fine since last night, there has been no hiccups in the internet whatsoever as far as I can tell. Yet when I looked on Cool Ideas announcements page this morning there's an entry that says my area has an Vumatel problem with no connectivity posted at that time (I am with them on Vuma). Could it be related? How does it even make sense? I get 107/86 on 100/100 line when doing a Speedtest from my PC.

The only super weird additional thing that I have noticed that I can say is that it looks like the ER-X is dropping incoming packets at an alarming rate on WAN_LOCAL (WAN pppoe0 to router), but I can't be sure what "normal" or "usual" behaviour is/was for this.

Neither the ER-X nor the AP cpu/mem usage seems excessively high.

I would really love it to get to the bottom of this weird issue, please, send halp.

 

[snorbaard]

Further testing:

Disconnected Unifi AP from network/power
Created a long forgotten Mikrotik hAP with same SSID and password
Phone connects to hAP WiFi, Speedtest app on phone results: 69 Mpbs/71 Mbps
Shutdown Mikrotik hAP
Re-power Unifi AP
Exclamation mark, useless WiFi, nothing works
Through Unifi Controller, force re-provision Unifi AP...
Now all of a sudden phone connects, no exclamation mark, Speedtest connected, but getting less than 1Mbps up and down on speed test...
Disable Unifi AP
Re-power hAP
Phone gets 72 / 65 Mbps on hAP again....

So. Is the Ubiquiti Unifi AP broken or what the heck is happening?

 

[odtech]

Unifi does have alot of bugs and speed drops is one of them but this seems a bit extreme.

The clue is in the packet drops. What are you using as the unifi controller hardware and what is the network layout?

Maybe a dodgy cable between the router and unifi system? These CCA cables you get these days as a replacement for copper is total garbage, you can just look at it funny and it breaks.

 

[snorbaard]

Unifi does have alot of bugs and speed drops is one of them but this seems a bit extreme.

The clue is in the packet drops. What are you using as the unifi controller hardware and what is the network layout?

Maybe a dodgy cable between the router and unifi system? These CCA cables you get these days as a replacement for copper is total garbage, you can just look at it funny and it breaks.

Absolutely agree about CCA cables! I installed Linkbasic 24AWG solid-copper cat5e.

Network topology is ONT -> (eth0) ER-X (eth4 PoE) -> Unifi AP

I don't run the Unifi controller 24/7, it's installed on my PC, I basically just used it to set up the AP. The AP was set-and-forget, ran flawless until now.

 

[souljazk]

Did you solve this? Have you tried to connect a new / foreign wifi device into your network and see if the issue persists?

Try Cloudflare WARP app on your phone, with it on do you have the same experience?

Have you tried exporting settings, re-setting the router & AP 2x back to back and importing the previous settings? You could also setup from scratch after the 2x resets.