Almost one year ago, I switched to a Cudy WR2100.

It has worked very well in these months. I installed it, then forgot about it, but it kept doing its job.

A few months ago, we bought a cheap TV, which happened to be an entry-level Android TV, too. I tried to set it up to connect to WiFi, but it did not work. Initially, I blamed the TV, but we did not buy it for its “smart” functionalities, so we just used it as a plain-old TV for some time.

But after a while, I wanted to use my old Oneplus One as a test device with Android 9, and it could not connect, too!

I solved the issue on the phone by updating it to an Android 10 ROM (and I had to find another way to deal with the original problems that needed Android 9 in another way 😮‍💨️).

Therefore, I initially thought Pie was the problem and that Android 10 fixed some bugs. But good luck finding information about an issue like this!

Eventually, a few days ago, I thought of carefully checking OpenWRT settings. I found that “Disassociate On Low Acknowledgement”, which allows the access point to disconnect stations based on low ACK conditions, was enabled. It can be set on a network basis, so it should be turned off separately for the 2,4GHz and the 5GHz, and it is the last item in the latest tab (advanced settings).

That fixed my problems. It is the first time I have found an option that could be a wrong default on OpenWRT in all these years. Or is it a problem with the MediaTek drivers? I am not sure, to be honest.

I must say that some functionalities like YouTube works pretty well and are convenient. I would have loved to use the built-in Chromecast, but I had continuous disconnections. So, maybe the fault must be shared between the TV and the router, after all 😅️.