Band Steering behavior

[mike.j.gallagher]

I've been seeing from funny behavior that appears to be related to band-steering. I haven't done any user debugging yet, I just wanted to see if anyone else has seen anything like this.

Basically, I see some users constantly flipping between g and a, or 2.4GHz N and 5GHz N. I'll see (in Airwave) that a user will start out on "a," then maybe 20 minutes later flip to "g." Then maybe 10 minutes on "g," then back to "a." This behavior continues throughout the user's day, and causes a disconnect every time the client switches bands. Interestingly enough, at least according to Airwave, the user always flips on 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50 minute intervals.

I'm running AOS 3.3.2.19 and all the adapters are Intel, either 3945ABG, 4965AGN, or 5100AGN, we use Juniper Odyssey as the client, and we're all connecting to the same SSID. The driver versions do vary amongst the users, but even with the latest drivers, we see this phenomenon. Of course, this never happens to me, so it makes it a bit difficult to troubleshoot.

[r_harris]

we're getting reports of the same type of behavior.

frequent disconnects and bad throughput being reported..

we cannot reproduce the error or get someone to show us.

Alcatel support says that it's related to a bug in band steering.

We're running 3.3.2.18, they recommend running 3.3.2.21 (not 3.4.x.x)

I'll let you know if the upgrade makes any difference.

[mike.j.gallagher]

Thanks Robert. Yes, definitely let me know what your experience is after the upgrade.

Can anyone from Aruba confirm the existence of this bug?

[cjoseph]

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Thanks Robert. Yes, definitely let me know what your experience is after the upgrade.

Can anyone from Aruba confirm the existence of this bug?

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There are a number of bugs fixed related to band steering in ArubaOS 3.3.2.21. The release note has the issue.

[mike.j.gallagher]

Yes, I do see that. Thanks Colin.

[mike.j.gallagher]

Robert - I've scheduled my upgrade for 11/7, so if you do yours before then, please do let me know if you see a difference.

[Ryan]

Release notes say there's a known issue in 3.3.2.21:

When the band steering table becomes full, multiple entries will age-out to avoid lookup/replace at
every insertion when the table is full.

What is the maximum number of entries in the bandsteering clients table?

[cjoseph]

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Release notes say there's a known issue in 3.3.2.21:

When the band steering table becomes full, multiple entries will age-out to avoid lookup/replace at
every insertion when the table is full.

What is the maximum number of entries in the bandsteering clients table?

---

4K is the number. Just like mentioned, multiple entries will age out when table is full.

[r_harris]

upgraded to 3.3.1.21, still no joy

Went to an area that surveyed very well in July, getting very weak performance. Stuck on b/g band, forced my laptop to go to A and it did, but with little impact on performance.

1 - AP showed 7 b/g clients, no A clients (even though my laptop was A capable)
2 - band steering must not be working

I suspect there may be poorly performing, old b clients associated bring down performance for everyone.

Any suggestions?

I thought ARM 2.0 and it's new features were supposed to take care of this ?

[cjoseph]

---

upgraded to 3.3.1.21, still no joy

Went to an area that surveyed very well in July, getting very weak performance. Stuck on b/g band, forced my laptop to go to A and it did, but with little impact on performance.

1 - AP showed 7 b/g clients, no A clients (even though my laptop was A capable)
2 - band steering must not be working

I suspect there may be poorly performing, old b clients associated bring down performance for everyone.

Any suggestions?

I thought ARM 2.0 and it's new features were supposed to take care of this ?

---

r_harris:

Do you have:

- wireless clients that share a layer 2 network with wired traffic
- drop broadcasts on at the Virtual AP layer?
- broadcast filter ARP on at the Virtual AP layer?

These in general will improve performance.