I replaced my google Wifi of 10 years with TP Link BE63 and I have nothing but trouble with Zigbee It was rock solid on Google Wifi now nothing works and it keeps dropping all the zigbee devices. I was not expecting this issue.. I moved the router further away from the hub, I have lowered the power settings on zigbee I have now changed channels on the hub. to 24 my hue is on 25, I was on channel 20 on my hub and man its driving me nuts. I am going to re do the whole network I think any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. And I did change the wifi channel to 10 which is stable now with the wi fi. But no change with the hub zigbee.
It's a tough call to say where the 2.4 Ghz interference my come from. I remember USB 3.0 ports were causing radio interference when they first started to appear on routers. As for channels in the 2.4 GHz range lets look at the charts:
One, Six, and Eleven are the preferred 2.4 GHz channels (20 Mhz) leaving sweet spots for 15 and 20 and 26 if you are in the USA.
Are you using the TP link as Mesh and if so are you wired backhaul or wireless backhaul? Also with Wifi in the 2.4 make sure you aren't using 40 Mhz only stick with 20 MHz.
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Yes I have the WiFi at 20 mhz and on channel 10 I have one mesh back hall wired and the other mesh point not wired. The he c8 is still isn’t reliable at all I have now switched channels down to 14 to see if it will be any better tried 20 24 and 23 no luck power at 8 12 and 16 as well. Very frustrating I have used the chart as well! Thanks for replying!!
One thing to try with WiFi 7 is to turn off band aggregation/multi-link operation if possible. I know some WiFi 7 mesh routers will use use MLO for wireless backhaul. Maybe shut down the wireless backhaul unit and see if the problem goes away if you can't turn it off.
Yep it’s off and I found going to channel 14 on hub with power at 16 I have a better connection hope it stays that way ! Thanks for the help appreciate it!
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Glad you have a working configuration. You have brought up some very good discussion here and cautions for us that use Zigbee networking when putting in a mesh Wi-Fi system.
I think the culprit is the dynamic bandwidth allocation used for MLO on wireless backhaul. I was doing some more research on how TP Link performs their backhaul. While their algorithm for bandwidth selection is proprietary this statement stood out Along with the diagram showing 6 GHz, 5 GHz, and 2.4 GHz being bonded together.
Backhaul Aggregation (Adaptive Path Selection) allows Deco units to use multiple Wi-Fi bands to transmit data, improving overall backhaul performance.
If you have the WiFi man app on your phone do a scan in the 2.4 GHz range, it's from Unifi but you don't need their hardware to perform analysis. This is long shot because normal 802.x rules for SSID and control frames may not be exposed when backhaul is leveraged. I do remember netgear had a active scan for their wireless backhaul that would grab huge chunks of 5 GHz if the frequency had low noise and was clear.
Thanks for your help!!!
I'm kinda confused by this statement.
I just checked the Deco BE63 manual. Like other TP-Link Deco mesh systems, the end-user is not permitted to set the width of the 2.4 GHz channel or pick the channel. Also, the system defaults to 2.4 GHz channels that are 40 MHz wide.
So to go back to @ronv42's point, how do you have the channel width set to be 20 MHz? These Deco systems also "re-optimize" channel choice when the firmware is updated or when they are power-cycled. So how are you getting it to stick to Channel 10?
In general, Deco mesh systems are a PITA and do not play well with zigbee networks. I'd recommend swapping it out for something more reliable and configurable.
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Oh oh looks like they are grabbing all the 5 GHz space also. I never go over 80 MHz because of any noise will drop down the connection speed and not all the 5 GHz Wifi devices support 160. Heck I found that 10% of my 5 GHz devices only do 40 even though I allocated 80.
