Zigbee devices become unresponsive when using USB network dongle

So I have been using a Intel NUC8i5BEH2 to run proxmox and a VM running home assisant for years. All the while using a conbee 2 USB stick with only minor issues along the way.

As of late I am encountering some weird issues with proxmox that causes all VM’s to lose network connection, and narrowed it down to the Intel network device in my NUC. So I bought a USB network dongle to “replace” the standard network connection on my NUC.

That part works great, however, when I plug the network device in, my Zigbee network starts acting weird and devices start showing up as offline in Deconz.
Diving into the logs I see transmit errors and delays happening:

08:42:18:711 delay sending request 168 dt 4 ms to 0x04CD15FFFED1FA43, ep: 0x01 cluster: 0x0006 onAir: 1

08:42:36:728 SC tick → StateCallFunction
08:42:36:728 SC tick → StateCallFunction
08:42:38:602 max transmit errors for node 0x588E81FFFE0C0D27, last seen by neighbors 54 s

If I unplug the USB network dongle, everything works fine, so the Conbee 2 stick is not malfunctioning.

The NUC has 4 USB 3.2 ports, so powering both the Conbee 2 and network dongle should not be an issue I assume.

Anyone have any idea of how to fix this?

USB 3 interference. Do you use an USB extension cable on your Conbee ?

Thanks for the tip, I disregarded that option because I’ve been using a p1 cable into the USB port right next to the conbee stick for years. But I guess that is not as data heavy as a network dongle, so causes less interference.

Ordered an extension cable and can test tomorrow.

Sadly this was not the issue. Problems were still occurring even when the Conbee stick was on a 1m USB extension cable.

Luckily the issue is no longer relevant, as I managed to solve my initial issue which made me use the USB network dongle in the first place. Still bummed that I have not found the actual problem/fix yet, but seeing as I run also run pihole on my NUC, I cannot tinker with it too much, or the wife starts yelling :wink: