After a lot of testing and moving things around, I have to say that you're right after all, it must be the signal. While signal dB values change, and I can maintain the connection for quite some time - even seemed fixed at some point - while uploading new config via web interface I've noticed something very telling.
In the batch of text files being uploaded, some would pass some would fail - retry - different batch would pass and different fail, and so on…
Got it going now but resigned myself to running it via usb.
Thank you for your time mate, you can close this thread 🙂