AmpliFi Alien Firmware v3.5.1
-
@Hoody007 Yea, you can email them at help@amplifi.com or submit a ticket here: https://help.amplifi.com/hc/en-us. I have no experience with this process though. Every time I've run into an issue I already see someone else on the forum already in contact with support lol. They'll typically ask for a data dump from your router though so if you have that handy you may be able to expedite the process. I would hope that enough people have complained that they don't need more data to troubleshoot...
-
Just did a live chat with support. They’re following up with me via email with the Tier 2 team. Will definitely ask about the next beta version & what they’re doing to fix it.
-
Will definitely ask about the next beta version...
Hi @Hoody007 - does beta v3.5.2rc1 fix any of your issues?
https://community.amplifi.com/topic/4534/alien-firmware-3-5-2rc1
-
Just installed it. We’ll see how it goes. Still haven’t received any follow up from support.
Edit: support now in touch. Will update.
-
Another update: I’ve been using 3.5.2rc1 for about 12 hrs now and the 5Ghz band is stable. No dropouts, same coverage as before.
For others experiencing issues, try updating to the beta - hopefully you’ll have a similar experience as I have (so far, anyway…)
-
@Hoody007 Is that "the" 5Ghz band of the additional band (radio)? I.e. do you have both the Wifi 5 and 6 radios enabled, or "just" the Wifi6?
-
I have both enabled. For what it’s worth I tried it both ways. I have a few devices which need the WiFi 5 band so that’s why it’s enabled.
-
@Hoody007 Why would a device "need" the Wi-Fi 5 band? Wi-Fi 6 is backwards compatible with Wi-Fi 5 devices.
-
Hi @Holohive1 - in theory they are backwards compatible, but in some cases they are not and clients may also need a firmware update to connect to a WiFi-6 AP and that doesn’t always happen
The PS4 was a good example of a client that could not connect when the Alien launched, although firmware updates on both sides had since fixed the issues
I have an older Dell laptop that can only connect to the additional WiFi-5 radio as well and that will unlikely ever be fixed
It’s for these clients at the initial launch of 802.11ax that the WiFi-5 radio was implemented
AmpliFi felt confident enough to remove it on the EU Alien later on
-
@Derek-Saville So AmpliFi removed the Wi-Fi 5 radio even though there's clients like Dell laptops that are left incompatible with the Alien? Seems a bit stupid to me.
-
Hi @Holohive1 - they removed the Additional WiFi-5 Radio from the EU model and implemented 802.11ax across the whole 5 GHz spectrum (5.2 & 5.8 GHz bands)
The US model has not changed
I would think it is pretty rare now for a client to be incompatible (attrition) but there are a few that still exist
Some problems also occur on the US model because the WiFi-6 radio is exclusive to the 5.8 GHz band and there are clients that do not want to go there - Japan for example does not utilize the upper band and I have some Japanese devices that hate connecting or refuse to connect on anything but the 5.2 GHz radio
-
@Derek-Saville Yeah, not to state the obvious, but it seems silly to me that - now that the Wifi6 radio finally has manual selection, it only operates in the 5.8 range. In my case, those channels are oversaturated, while (base-)channel 40, for example, would work fine. I don't want to have to enable the extra radio to get there, and then be limited to Wifi 5 (I do have a number of Wifi 6 devices). Frustrating, and doesn't make sense...
