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29/03/2020

Amazon Fire Sticks not connecting to Ubiquiti Unifi Access Points - Fixed

I recently got fed up with the occasional issue with my Mikrotik Access Point so I purchased a Unifi UAP-AC-LR to replace it. I took the opportunity to change the SSID and PSK as I've been meaning to do it for several years, so I went around the house reconfiguring various devices. I got as far as my Amazon Fire Stick and although it could see the network, it would fail when attempting to connect.

Fortunately I was able to find a solution.








I googled the issue and didn't really come up with much until I remembered DFS - A feature that can automatically detect if a device is interfering with another use such as weather radar and switch off the device. DFS is mandatory on certain 5Ghz channels but not all of them. Some manufacturers either don't implement DFS or get the device certified to use it (I'm not sure which ) which means they can only use 5Ghz channels that don't require DFS.

So I checked which channel my Unifi AP was using and compared it to this 5Ghz Channel Wiki Page and sure enough it was on Channel 56 - a channel that requires DFS. Instead I forced the AP to use Channel 46, a channel that doesn't require DFS, and sure enough the Fire Stick connected instantly.

Anyway.... not the most interesting blog post, but as I struggled to get any assistance from a Google Search I thought I'd throw it up there in case someone else has the same issue.




3 comments:

  1. You Beauty thanks for posting this - had exactly the same problem with an Ap Ac - switched 5g from auto to a non DFS channel and firestick found instantly. Many thanks indeed!

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  2. Life saver, I noticed after my UniFi AP restarted that my FireStick refused to connect to my normal WiFi network. Manually set the channels as suggested here and everything was fine.

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  3. Thanks for this. I had exactly the same problem and changed channel to an non DFS channel and the firestick joined the network again!

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