Deaf Node

A couple of weeks ago I upgraded our 83 Fire node to the AREDN firmware 3.18.9.0, the latest stable release. When I checked the mesh status about a day later from my QTH node, the firehouse node was showing up as an ip address instead of a node name and a LQ of 100% but a NLQ of 0%.  Apparently the node was not receiving any packets.  I drove over to Tech and checked from that direction with the same results.

I finally resorted to asking someone with access to the firehouse to cycle power for me.  While the node seemed to work fine after that, in a few days it had gone deaf again.  This time I tried driving over with another node and parking right underneath it.  However as I moved a few blocks away it lost connection again.  One theory is that the distance setting had somehow gotten corrupted/zeroed out, causing the node to attempt to re-transmit a packet just as it was about to receive a reply, thus missing it. Therefore when I re-connected I changed the setting slightly, saved and rebooted in hopes of re-establishing a working correct setting.

Another theory stems from the observation that the recently installed Tech West-facing node would sometimes be heard very weakly by 83 Fire.  This node is facing in the opposite direction and is connected via dtd link to the east-facing node that has a good connection with 83 Fire.  Perhaps the firehouse node was tuning out the strong signals in an attempt to connect with the weak signal from the west node.  I’ve since set the west node to another channel to eliminate this possibility.