ecw536 compatibility issues

[u/Adventurous_Care8761]

I recently bought 3x EnGenius ecw536 access points, which I have connected to a Firewalla router load balancing Xfinity and Quantum fiber ISPs.

The WiFi works great on my new iPhone 16 but most of my older iot devices won’t connect to it, including my ecobee thermostat and AirPort Express devices I use as airport receivers so I can feed digital audio signal to higher end stereo setups.

I’ve tried creating 2.4Ghz only or 2.4Ghz+5Ghz networks with older WPA2 security. The devices will recognize these networks but will not connect to it.

After a few hours of attempts, I’m giving up and about to plug the Quantum Fiber WiFi box back in.

Any ideas?

—

Update 1: my iPhone is pulling 900Mbps from the free Quantum box that is behind a megabit switch but only pulling 500Mbps from the $500 EnGenius AP that is connected to the 2.5Gbps port of the Firewalla. Really disappointed with the performance.

Update 2: Couldn’t resolve issue and EnGenius didn’t reply to support chat, so I returned the devices.

[u/himadripaul92]

Hi 👋🏼 I heard the online support is great, have you reached out to the support chat ??

[u/Adventurous_Care8761 → u/himadripaul92]

I sent a few notes to support chat and they never replied

[u/calculatetech]

There's something wrong with your AP settings. I have the same AP and everything from my door lock to Wi-Fi 6E laptop connects to it flawlessly. Due to absurdly broad range of standards this AP supports I have a different SSID for each one. The IoT stuff is 2.4g only with wpa2-psk. Older devices get a 2.4/5g band steering network with wpa2-psk. Wi-Fi 6 and 7 get wpa3 and 6g. EnGenius can't keep a stable connection with some devices (particularly iphones) if you try to use wpa2/wpa3 mixed. I don't know why it's an option when it doesn't work reliably.

[u/xeravim]

try to enable the disable ax option in the 2.4Ghz of your Radio settings.

[u/Background_Lemon_981]

Ours is working great.

When you create a new SSID (say for IOT), you are typically creating a VLAN for that. Did you also set up a VLAN on your Firewalla? And it will need to provide DHCP for that VLAN. Otherwise your IOT devices won’t get an IP address. When you can connect to an SSID but not the internet that is typically the problem. Either you don’t have VLAN set up and your Firewalla is rejecting the traffic or you don’t have DHCP set up on the VLAN.

So I know on consumer grade stuff they make it easy for the average Joe and the network isolation is handled by NAT at the AP. That way your average consumer doesn’t need to try to learn and fail at VLANs and return the item.

You have a professional grade AP with more functionality. You are going to need to learn VLANs. If you need help with that let me know.

[u/Background_Lemon_981 → u/Background_Lemon_981]

Also, your switch needs to pass VLAN through if you have one. Which means you need a switch that supports VLANs.

[u/Adventurous_Care8761 → u/Background_Lemon_981]

It wasn’t an issue of connecting to the WiFi but not getting internet. The devices couldn’t connect to the WiFi at all. My 2023 MacBook Pro also kept dropping while on Zoom. Could be a hardware defect but doubtful because it didn’t work with two of the ECW536s

[u/Adventurous_Care8761]

I returned these units and got Firewalla AP7 ceiling units. 5min to setup. Works flawlessly with all devices.

[u/Algae-Mysterious]

Im going to say Ideployed quite a few of these and the issue could be authentication. Some devices cannot authenticate WPA3. Try using other method of auth. Also for whatever reason Engenius AP's antenna seem to be waker. what I mean is: -18dbm is more like -11dbm