Weird problem with ESPHome's mDNS device discovery on Unifi APs

ESPHome
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I’ve used ESPHome for a while now and I know I could always go back to "status_use_ping": true but I like to take on a networking challenge. I had the ESPHome ingress working, previously: all ESPHome devices on my network showed up as green. However, recently, that changed and I’m not sure why. Now some of them are red! :frowning:

I’ve tried to find out why some of them are green and some of them are red and I believe it’s because I have two Unifi access points that the various devices connect to. I have determined that I only see devices turn green when they’re hooked up to one of the two specific access points. At first, I was not believing what I was seeing but now I’ve proven it to myself.

  1. UAP-AC-Pro ← ESPHome devices hooked to this one are green
  2. U6-LR ← ESPHome devices hooked to this one are red

Many devices I have fallback/priority set for the AP to connect to and I can reboot them (or the AP) and watch them switch from AP-to-AP and see how their status on the ESPHome ingress changes. It aligns perfectly.

The weird thing is that the topology map used to be displayed correctly (I think this was before the most recent update 0.23.2 of the Unifi Controller). It would display both APs at the SAME top-level hierarchy and all the devices as the next level down from them. Now, however, it displays the U6-LR as being connected to the UAP-AC-Pro for some reason (like a daisy-chain).

Here’s the WiFi map:

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image229×658 41.6 KB

I don’t know if this is related but it seems very coincidental. I’ve Googled around and the consensus that I’ve found online is that the Unifi topology map is broken and doesn’t work which doesn’t really help me. I’m wondering if there are any Unifi gurus out there who can help me troubleshoot this one. The networks that my ESPHome devices use on both APs have completely aligned configurations so it doesn’t make sense that one would be blocking mDNS while the other allowed it.

any ideas?

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Check the network cable to U6-LR

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Thanks @tom_l, but it wasn’t the network cable.

I figured it out. For anyone who has this issue in the future. I found that there’s a “meshing” option on the site and on each AP . With this enabled (and it’s set that way by default) it can opt to route traffic from one AP to another wirelessly instead of using the wired uplink. I guess you might want that if you are trying to mesh your WiFi. I have gigabit ethernet connected to all my APs so I definitely don’t want this option enabled.

The site setting is called “Enable Wireless Uplink”, found here:
image

If “Enable Wireless Uplink” is enabled on the site, there’s a setting on each AP inside the “Radio” section that allows each AP to be “Meshed”. You can also disable it on an AP-by-AP basis if you use these options.

Now all my ESPHome items are green again and mDNS discovery can see all devices! :smiley:

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