SSID shows up on some computers but not others

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alisam

830 posts

Ultimate Geek

#254445 12-Aug-2019 15:39

I have a 2013 MacBook Air (2013) [11ac] which started to play up as regards wi-fi. I think I tried everything I could find on the net. So decided to purchase a TP-LINK Archer T3U Wireless Adaptor, which is dual band.

Installed OK but I had 2 SSID'S (say ABC [2.4 & 5GHz] and ABC24 [2.4GHz]). The Air would connect to ABC but at 2.4GHz. Again, I tried several things gleamed from the net.

So I set up a brand new SSID (say ABC5). The TP-LINK will not show ABC5 and when I installed the TP-LINK on my HP Laptop (11n) it would not show ABC5 either.

But the ABC5 SSID does show up on an Intel NUC [11ac] and a Dell Laptop [11ac] and I can connect successfully. Note: Not using the TP-LINK.

My question is, if I am using the TP-Link for wireless, why will it not show ABC5?

PC: Dell Inspiron 16 5640 (Windows 11 Home), Dell Inspiron 7591 2n1 (Windows 11 Pro), HP ProBook 470G1 (Windows 10 Pro), Intel NUC7I5BNH (Zorin)
Net: Grandstream 1 x GWN7062 Router, 1 x GWN7665 Access Point
Storage: Synology DS216play NAS, 2 x 6TB
Media: 3 x Amazon FireTV. Echo, Dot, Spot
TV: 2 x Samsung H6400 55" LED TV, Panasonic TH-P50G10Z 50" Plasma TV
Mobile: Samsung Galaxy A52 5G
Wearable: Gear S3 Frontier

sbiddle

30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#2294862 12-Aug-2019 15:47

Probably set to to a different country where that frequency isn't supported so it won't be visible.

bignose

142 posts

Master Geek

#2296345 13-Aug-2019 09:27

sbiddle:

Probably set to to a different country where that frequency isn't supported so it won't be visible.

I've also seen adaptors where they couldn't even be bothered doing proper country support, so they only support the 'universal' U-NII Low/Mid (36-64) channels - try setting your AP to fixed channel 36 on 5ghz and see if the 5ghz ssid becomes visible.

alisam

830 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2296353 13-Aug-2019 09:47

I somehow fixed this earlier this morning but couldn't get access to Geekzone to report back.

I don't know exactly how I did it, but:

1) The TP-LINK wireless utility is pretty basic, but it did allow me to manually set the SSID to ABC5.

2) Before or after, I had been looking at the 5GHz channel and it was on 149 (Auto Setting). Note: 3 GWN7610, 1 wired, 2 mesh

I tried changing it to 153 on the wired AP thinking it would change all the AP's which caused a reboot but didn't change.

Note: Their brief help says 'Select the best channel for Wi-Fi traffic, based on the bandwidth required (80, 40 or 20 MHz) and band (2.4 or 5 GHz). If this AP uses wireless mesh for connection, the channel setting does not take effect.'.

So I set the setting back to Auto, which caused another reboot.

Soon after, I could see the ABC5 SSID on the MAC and on Windows 10.

Until the last post, I had not noticed that the 5GHz channel has moved to 36.