After many hours troubling shooting my C8 going offline on the network, I finally narrowed it down to the "shared SSID", turns out our HOA internet provided is using WiFi Shared/blended SSID 2.4 GHz - 5 GHz
What was happening, is that it C8 would worked sometime for hours, or days, but it was random disconnects.
So I added a RM to reboot after the internet connection was lost thinking it was just a weak or high traffic issues
The C8 is in a rental condo, and the HOA's IT department which I have no control of has rules and routing algorithms to switch between 2.4 and 5Ghz traffic
It appears that the C8 will connect to the 2.4 Ghz ONLY if it is down (offline) for 5 minutes, then the router will default back to the 2.4Ghz connection until and allow the C8 on the network until the router algorithms redirects the traffic to the 5Ghz, then the C8 goes offline
Since I have no control of the HOA router. what are my options?
You need a wireless repeater that connects to the HOA WiFi, and then provides 2.4 GHz WiFi access on a different SSID to your C-8.
Many years ago, I have used a Netgear WNDR3400 flashed with dd-wrt for this purpose.
I may have an old WNDR3400 or WNDR3300 laying around somewhere. You can have it for the cost of shipping if I can find it.
Edit - haven't had my coffee yet, so my mind is slow. Get a dual-band wireless ethernet bridge and connect your C-8 to it using ethernet. Here's an example of a dual-band wireless ethernet bridge:
And, don't forget to ensure that your Zigbee channel isn't conflicting with the 2.4 wifi channel. I'm not sure how to do that if you have no control over the wifi in that area, but it's a real issue for zigbee, nonetheless.
However, when we change network to the static, hit save, we get the message to confirm, and to reboot, which I did, it disconnect off the WIFI network, reboots, and comes back up as DHCP, reconnects to the WIFI, like the save is not taking
I tried twice, same thing, It does not save the static IP
For your original problem, yes it sounds some sort of band steering on the router, to try and kick clients over to the 5Ghz for faster speeds. Would normally result is less complaining of slow speeds. I have this enabled on my router but I have not had it impact my test C8 that is on Wifi. It might actually be a very basic roaming assistance which literally just disconnects a client if the RSSI is out of range, in hopes they will use cellular or switch bands.
Anyway... for the Wifi issue I think someone else was having this issue with the Wifi getting stuck. Let me see if I can find that post because they said my advice worked (but I forget what I told them to do).
I cannot seem to find it but I think my suggestion was to connect ethernet (just leave it on DHCP), then shut down or disconnect Wifi, do not reboot hub. Do a network reset (hold hidden button under hub for 7 seconds then let go, LED flashes and it reboots). I think after they did that the Wifi stayed off. From there you could try setting a static IP.
It does reset it back to DHCP, and normally it does not touch the Wifi settings but in the case where the Wifi would not shut off I think that is what fixed it, doing a reset while Wifi is disabled. My goal was to first get the Wifi to shut off and stay off after a reboot. Then once that is solved you can try setting the static IP.
OK, I'm still confused, so I want to be sure I do not lock myself out my C8
If my C8 is currently connected to the Wifi using DHCP, and im currently connected to the C8 using Wifi.
Then I go to network settings, select static IP and set the IP info, and follow your instructions, by not rebooting, but instead resetting using the hidden button, which should reset, and shut off WIFI and stay off.
Question. your you saying that the static IP then then be saved, and it will boot up disabling the WIFI and use the static info I added?
Next question: so how do I get it back to WIFI, if my static does not work and I need to get back into my C8, that's the confusing part to me if the reset shuts off the WIFI
Thats not what I said to do at all. I said to just plug in the ethernet and leave it on DHCP. Disable/disconnect the Wifi then do a network reset. Hub will reboot on DHCP and should get an IP from the router. I assume you have a functional DHCP in order for the Wifi to work?
Then AFTER you get the hub running on ethernet only and Wifi stays off after a reboot, then you can try doing a static IP if you want.
If you get locked out of the hub due to a bad static IP setting, that is what the network reset is meant for, you use that to reset it back to DHCP.
Also, if you do a network reset without the hub connected to ethernet, and the Wifi cannot connect, it should start up the MyNewHubitat onboarding SSID so you can reconnect it.
There are fail-safes in place so you can get back in if you mess up the networking, as long as you have a functional DHCP server on the LAN.
