I just replaced my antique home WiFi system with a shiny new Ubiquiti AmpliFi HD mesh system. I did keep an outdoor access point from the old configuration to reach the devices out in my yard.
Now I find that the Cores I have inside are all connecting to the WiFi and appear to be working correctly. They publish on-schedule, and they receive events to which they subscribe. Breathing cyan just find and everything seems great. Except that the Particle Dashboard reports that all of these Core devices that are connected via Ubiquiti are not connected. Actually, when I first pull up the dashboard they all show the cyan dot next to them but when I click a device the dot goes dark and then it says it is offline. Neither can I connect to them to read variables, execute functions, etc. It is as if they are blind to the outside world even though they appear to function correctly from inside the network. The dashboard reports recent handshake events.
The three Photons that are outside and I believe connected to the old access point are working exactly as expected. I’m not certain they are connected to the old access point, but I suspect so. Hard to tell.
Could this be a Core vs. Photon issue?
Has anyone experience this issue, and if so, can you recommend a fix?
@Muskie, your new router is most likely blocking TCP port 5863 which is needed for your devices to connect to the Particle Cloud. Your old router is not doing that so your photons are working as expected.
Thank you pekay123 for the information. Is TCP port 5863 a port on the Particle Cloud server that my devices connect to, or is that a port that the Photons are listening to for connections back from the cloud?
Ok if I understand this correctly, my Core will open a TCP connection to port 5863 on the server using an ephemeral local port number, and then the server will open a TCP connection to port 5863 on my Core using its own ephemeral local port number. Is this correct? If so, how does this ever get through a firewall?
I looked into the new routers ability to open ports and it looks like the only thing it can do is port forwarding. Since the Cores are getting dynamic IP addresses, I don’t think this is a solution. Plus, the port forwarding setup requires me to know the port numbers on both devices (core and server) or to have a range of ports that match on both devices. Not sure if this is at all useful here.
From the point of view of your router/firewall, the only connection from the Photon is outbound TCP 5863. It’s considered outbound because the connection is established from the Photon.
Once the TCP connection is opened, data flows bidirectionally, but this is just how TCP works and does not affect your firewall rules (unless you’re doing something really weird).
Thank you rickkas7, that makes sense and is how I originally thought the connection worked. But now I don’t understand how my Cores are connecting to the cloud, publishing data, receiving subscribed data, but yet show up as not connected in the dashboard and I cannot access variables and functions from outside my network. This new mesh system must work in really weird ways, as you say.