I have used many versions of 2.8 and 2.9 other the last year, and all have shown the same issue. I am still puzzled as to why when a wireless client associates to my MT routers for the first time (or for the first time since having associated with some other router), the clients take way long to aqcuire their ip information via dhcp. It takes long enough that in WinXP, the icon comes up that only a “limited connection” is available. Then about 2 to 3 seconds after that, it immediately gets the ip info and cruises along just fine. I have had this problem with 6 different MT routers, and I hope it is something in my config that I can change to remedy this. I assume not everyone has this same problem because I can not easily find other posts about this.
It is a fairly trivial problem, but it makes my access points seem kind of substandard to first time users… Any advice is greatly appreciated.
is your DHCP server acting on a bridge interface which has STP enabled? STP takes time to establish loop free connection, this takes 15 seconds (default), in this time a client won’t get an IP address from DHCP because the physical interface is down during this time. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanning_Tree_Protocol)
The delay is still present. When turning phone’s WiFi on, it waits several seconds on “getting IP address” phase, and finally, when address is got, rule’s counter is incremented.
The setting was “rstp”. Changing it to “none” did the trick. What if I do not want to disable STP?
It’s a good question. IMHO, the timeout for getting an IP address by DHCP is configured to short on the devices - I know you won’t be able to change this on most mobile devices RSTP takes less time, but appareantly still to much for the devices trying to get an address by DHCP.
I tend to propose to not use STP/RSTP on the bridge bridging the wifi with the ethernet ports.
Even with RouterOS 7.6 my two MikroTik Wifi APs were killing me on the time it takes to connect. Setting the STP to NONE on the bridge fixed this. Thanks for pointing it out.
RSTP takes less time, but appareantly still to much for the devices trying to get an address by DHCP.