Often when I'm trying to troubleshoot or monitor a network issue, I notice that Wi-Fi clients in the connected client list of a router or AP will drop, then reappear. Sometimes even wired devices disappear and reappear but it's less often. It's either immediate, a few seconds, or even minutes before they show up again. Sometimes a client doesn't show up for quite a long time. During this time, the device doesn't actually lose connectivity, and can be running a download with no problems. If for some reason it was disassociating and reassociating, I'd expect it to reappear very quickly (within whatever refresh time the code of the page allows) otherwise the device's download would suffer. Sometimes manually disconnecting and reconnecting will restore it. And of course the wired devices are not losing connectivity.
I've just set up my Asus router in AP-only mode to use instead of my cable gateway. I saw that sort of thing on both devices, though. Even though I was actively connected from my phone to the Asus, it wasn't showing the device at all until I disconnected and reconnected, and then it popped up instantly. But if I went to the System Log and checked the wireless log (which is really just a static status output, not a log), the phone was there the whole time. Two other devices are also listed in the log, but they aren't appearing in the client list at all either. They actually all disappeared when I manually changed the channels used for both bands, but they are all connected, just not showing as clients. And even though my phone showed up after reconnecting, a couple of minutes later it disappeared again, then showed up again a few minutes later. At the same time, even all the wired devices that are seen through the connection to the cable gateway disappeared, but NOT the gateway itself, then they showed up again.
Is this just flaky code on particular devices? I've seen this behavior on many devices, but it's usually just APs that I was monitoring. But that includes both standalone APs, APs managed by a local software or hardware controller, and those managed by a cloud controller. Is the client list the result of active scanning and for some reason it sometimes doesn't get results, so client devices are removed from the list?
I've just set up my Asus router in AP-only mode to use instead of my cable gateway. I saw that sort of thing on both devices, though. Even though I was actively connected from my phone to the Asus, it wasn't showing the device at all until I disconnected and reconnected, and then it popped up instantly. But if I went to the System Log and checked the wireless log (which is really just a static status output, not a log), the phone was there the whole time. Two other devices are also listed in the log, but they aren't appearing in the client list at all either. They actually all disappeared when I manually changed the channels used for both bands, but they are all connected, just not showing as clients. And even though my phone showed up after reconnecting, a couple of minutes later it disappeared again, then showed up again a few minutes later. At the same time, even all the wired devices that are seen through the connection to the cable gateway disappeared, but NOT the gateway itself, then they showed up again.
Is this just flaky code on particular devices? I've seen this behavior on many devices, but it's usually just APs that I was monitoring. But that includes both standalone APs, APs managed by a local software or hardware controller, and those managed by a cloud controller. Is the client list the result of active scanning and for some reason it sometimes doesn't get results, so client devices are removed from the list?
