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jo2jo
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Wireless KeepAlive Frames ? and/or super high "last activity" on clients

Sun Sep 04, 2016 8:54 am

Can someone please explain what ENABLING or DISABLING wireless interface -> keepalive frames does? Mainly in the context of a mikrotik being used as an Access Point to consumer wireless devices (ie Phones, Tablets, Laptops of various types).

the mikrotik manual's Description for this properly is blank, and searches of google for "wireless keepalive frames" seems to show that this is a setting / function specific to mikrotiks (ie all the google results are mikrotik related.

Im noticing on a few of my APs , clients with Last Activity of 1000s of seconds (see attached image please, when i cross ref. the clients with high last activity times, with their dhcp leases, they are always Phones, iPhones mainly and sometimes android phones) - also i have noticed the devices must be sleeping, because when they are active their signal strength with jump up 20 or so db. This is something i have not seen at prior installs (all the MTs are running ROS 6.36 or newer , most have XR2 2.4ghz radio cards in RB 433)

I did read this tread that says the power save function of enabling WMM mode on my APs may help with battery life on iOS devices (all of my APs have WMM set to disabled (the default), since i dont classify my traffic anyway - i DO have keepalive Frames enabled (the mt default)

Thanks
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Jan89
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Re: Wireless KeepAlive Frames ? and/or super high "last activity" on clients

Mon Sep 05, 2016 4:49 pm

I also had problem with high values of last activity, but noticed that happens only on VAP interfaces. When I use ap only with one ssid without VAP's the problem did not occur.
 
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ploquets
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Re: Wireless KeepAlive Frames ? and/or super high "last activity" on clients

Sun Sep 10, 2017 9:15 pm

I'm having the same problem over here.

Wireless N 2.4
Image

How did you guys managed to solve?
Thanks
 
jbird
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Re: Wireless KeepAlive Frames ? and/or super high "last activity" on clients

Mon Sep 25, 2017 10:18 pm

I'm having this same problem on some of our radios with virtual APs. It seems that Having KeepAlive frames is disabled by default when I create virtual APs. This problem only happens on some of our virtual APs that have KeepAlive frames disabled. I've discovered this happening on different RouterOS versions: 6.34.6, 3.37.5, and 6.38.1.

I enabled KeepAlive frames on one of the virtual APs, and so far the problem hasn't returned on this AP.

Are there any disadvantages to enabling KeepAlive frames on client access points?

Will the ghost client entries that are in the registration tables cause any problems, or are they merely a nuisance?
 
jo2jo
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Re: Wireless KeepAlive Frames ? and/or super high "last activity" on clients

Fri Jun 15, 2018 9:31 pm

is there any update on this (or mt reply) - im still seeing this, only on vAP wireless ints, and on 6.42.3 (on all types of mt wireless devices, ie wap AC and cap AC, amoung others)- all have KeepAlive frames enabled / is checked

it doesnt seem to cause any issues, that i know of, but it does cause issues with monitoring or data gathering (ie wireless ints show 30+ clients , when only 5 are real).
tks

EDIT (solution?)- It seems that on each vAP there are now seperate settings for Keep Alive Frames and Multicast Buffering (+ Multicast Helper type) - (you do need to click Advanced, on the vAP to see these) -
The ROS default on Wlans (non vAPs) is checked for both of these, however when you make a vAP the default is OFF / UN-checked for both of these. (i had assumed it would take settings from master wlan, or have the same defaults as a default wlan, but no). I have now enabled Keep ALives on the vAP and will report back if this eliminates the "ghosts".
 
jbird
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Re: Wireless KeepAlive Frames ? and/or super high "last activity" on clients

Thu Aug 02, 2018 9:29 pm

I've been using KeepAlive frames to eliminate the "ghosts" for several months now, and haven't noticed any problems as a result of it.

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