I have been having ongoing issues with ESPHome devices seemingly dropping off the network. I have some ESP32 and an 8266 device (the 8266 seems to be slightly worse for this).

What happens is the device will show as unavailable in Home Assistant, however it still shows "Online" in ESPHome (but I cannot connect wirelessly to view logs or update firmware).

I have mesh wireless and I can view what devices are connected to which mesh, and the devices will show as connected to the access point, however I can't even ping the device.

Eventually, it might pop back online, or I may have to power cycle the device multiple times to get it to reappear.

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I have tried all the usual stuff:

• No power saving
• Forcing 802.11g
• Static IP
• Separate 2.4GHz network
• Locking device to a particular AP (no roaming)

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Sometimes I will have success for quite a while and I'll think the problem is fixed, until there's a power cut and then everything starts playing up again.

There are two things that I don't understand, and that is why the devices show as connected without issue to the wifi APs (but are unpingable) and also why I can see traffic to/from a problem device's MAC address when I do a packet capture.

For example, the 8266 device is currently having issues. Shows connected to the nearest AP (which it is locked to). Shows "Online" in ESPHome. Can't view logs from ESPHome (Connect call failed). Can't install firmware from ESPHome (No route to host). Can't ping the IP (Host is down).

I ran a packet capture on my OPNsense router for traffic to/from the device's MAC address and I see traffic seemingly flowing between the Home Assistant IP and the device's IP. I also see traffic to 224.0.0.251 from the ESP device indicating mDNS (presumably why it shows 'Online' in ESPHome). I'm not a PCAP expert, but some of this stuff is at least originating from the device itself, so it must have some connectivity, right?

10.0.0.230 is the ESP device

10.0.0.4 is Home Assistant/ESPHome

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https://preview.redd.it/kfnss7lfwjlc1.png?width=2219&format=png&auto=webp&s=1b698bc3dd481f238baab3eeec21eb0b9e0dfbfa

Does anyone have any ideas for (hopefully) something really simple I am overlooking that is intermittently preventing normal network communication on my ESP devices?