Unstable Wi-Fi connection on Raspberry Pi 5 with some routers

Product support balenaOS
1

Title: Unstable Wi-Fi connection on Raspberry Pi 5 with some routers

Hi,

I’m experiencing intermittent Wi-Fi connectivity on several Raspberry Pi 5 devices running balenaOS.

The issue only seems to occur with certain ISP-provided routers. I can reproduce it with my home router and with the router at one of our deployment locations.

The connection sometimes works normally, then stops working for around 5–10 minutes before eventually returning. Rebooting the Raspberry Pi or the router sometimes fixes the issue temporarily, but not consistently.

When I connect the same Raspberry Pi to a Huawei router, the Wi-Fi connection remains stable.

Each Raspberry Pi is also connected via Ethernet to a local printer. This Ethernet connection uses a separate subnet and must not be used as the default internet route.

I have tried several variations of the Wi-Fi connection files, including DHCP and static IP configurations, but the issue remains intermittent. These are the profiles currently in use.

Ethernet profile:

[connection]
id=my-ethernet
type=ethernet
interface-name=eth0

[ipv4]
method=manual
address1=192.168.10.1/24
never-default=true
route-metric=2000
ignore-auto-routes=true

[ipv6]
method=ignore

Primary Wi-Fi profile, used with the stable Huawei router:

[connection]
id=wifi-primary
type=wifi
autoconnect=true
autoconnect-priority=100

[wifi]
hidden=true
mode=infrastructure
ssid=<REDACTED_PRIMARY_SSID>

[wifi-security]
key-mgmt=wpa-psk
psk=<REDACTED>

[ipv4]
method=auto

[ipv6]
method=disabled

Secondary Wi-Fi profile, used with the problematic ISP router:

[connection]
id=wifi-secondary
type=wifi
autoconnect=true
autoconnect-priority=10

[wifi]
hidden=true
mode=infrastructure
ssid=<REDACTED_SECONDARY_SSID>

[wifi-security]
key-mgmt=wpa-psk
psk=<REDACTED>

[ipv4]
method=manual
addresses=192.168.1.202/24
gateway=192.168.1.254
dns=8.8.8.8;1.1.1.1;

[ipv6]
method=disabled

Is there anything in these connection profiles that could explain the intermittent connectivity with some routers?

Please let me know which logs or diagnostic information would be most useful, and I will collect them while the problem is occurring.

Thank you for your help.

2

Hi, and welcome to the forums.

What version of balenaOS are you using, and do you also see the same issues if you run the Raspberry Pi OS?

3

Hi,

I am currently using the Balena OS 6.12.3rev4, but I had the same issue with previous releases as well.

I just made a ping+speedtest for 24h on each OS (balena os and RPI os), and here are the results.
So no issue with the RPI os, the connexion is pretty stable over the 24h, whereas the Balena just stopped at some point, without any action on my side.

New Project-31
New Project-312316×1800 209 KB

Thank you for your reply,

Victor