Issues with IoT.

[CZ]

Hi PcWRT team,

I am currently experiencing some issues with my IoT devices. When I try to control them from my iPhone, they are often slow to respond or fail to react entirely. For context, everything was working perfectly until about a week ago. I have tried adjusting various settings, such as disabling Access Control and modifying the WiFi configurations. Interestingly, the IoT devices sometimes react when I click save changes to the Access Control settings, but I have not yet been able to pinpoint the root cause.

For additional context:
– Most of my IoT devices only support WPA2 2.4 GHz, and I am currently using WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK Mixed Mode.
– My IoT settings use Quad9 DNS with “Enforce” activated, no black or white list.
– My iPhone is connected to a 5.0 GHz WPA3 network on the same router.
– My iPhone is using the “Recommended settings” for DNS.

• This topic was modified 1 month ago by CZ. Reason: Typo

[support]

I’m assuming that your IoT devices are controlled over the cloud. E.g., you are able to control the devices when you turn off WiFi on your iPhone. If that’s the case, your IoT devices should be controllable as long as the router is not blocking Internet access for the devices.

[CZ]

I am not sure if this is a special case, but all of them depend on a Wi-Fi network for control. I would like to follow up on this discussion.

I have two additional questions:
1. Is there documentation or more information available for all the settings under ‘Access Control’? The descriptions appear to be literal, but I am still unsure.
2. For the ad block options (easy, hagezi….etc), is there a way to activate them based on the profile? Currently, it seems that when an option is enabled, it applies to all profiles.

[support]

Most IoT devices are controlled over the cloud. The controller app on your iPhone has the abilities to view and command the devices wherever it has Internet access (either at home or outside). Both your controller app and the IoT devices talk to some server provided by the IoT device vendor. The router only provides Internet access to these devices. Responsiveness depends on the vendor’s cloud service. The only time a router would hinder performance of these devices is when it blocks access to the vendor’s server.

1. You can find more info here: https://portal.pcwrt.com/blog/2020/01/08/how-to-allow-or-block-web-sites-on-the-router/
2. When you choose an ad-block list, all profiles will use the same list. I.e., you can’t have different block lists for different profiles. However, you can enable ad-blocking for some profiles but disable it for other profiles.

[Author]

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