Controllerless Networks

So, here's my problem...  We have purchased a handful of these APs.  I have 3 of them setup, and they are working OK.  I have 1 in the east side of our building and one on the west side.  I log into the UI, and see all of the clients, and which AP they are connected to, but most of them are getting a really bad signal/speed.  Now, I've turned one on in the middle of the building, between the original 2, and all of the signal strengths and speeds come up.  Why does adding another AP effect the signal of existing APs?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

-Nate

Adding APs to an environment side by side (e.g. same RF environment) should decrease RF strength from each AP, or represent no change.  It should not go up.

 

Do you have some screen shots or data of what you are seeing that we can pick through?

(Commenting, but I admittedly have no hands on experience with instant APs.)

The clients with poor signal strength...are they reporting poor performance/experience? I'm uncertain as to how those signal metrics are reported, but it *sounds* like the middle AP is contributing RF statistics that would help accurately report signal strength. Then again, it may not work that way.

When the middle AP comes up and the client signal/speed improved, did the clients associate to the middle AP?

Sorry, I've had a lot of other stuff come up that I had to deal with.  I will be back at the facility with the 105s on Friday.  I'll be able to get some screenshots and get some more information then.

I would like to ask if before installing the IAP's did you have someone run a site survey and got that only 2 AP's should be enough - or you thought that 2 IAP's with the power settings at 20 should be enough  -  in this case you could still have portions of the building that are not covered by WiFi signal.

The WiFi network is it used for Voice or Data  - that would be another thing that should be took in consideration once you deploy a network.

We did not have a site survey done.  My former System Admin ordered these AP-105s to replace 2 Cisco APs that we were previously using.  It didn't tell me a whole lot of what his thought process was, but he initially ordered Cisco replacements and then returned them for the Arubas.  I'm not sure why he did that.  But the 2 Cisco APs were fine.  I'm at that location now, I should be able to do some more troubleshooting with them today.

 

Nate

Just to have a comparison what Cisco AP's were there before?

The Aruba AP's are they connected to the Controller or they IAP's ?

The Cisco APs that were replaced were Aironet 1100.

 

Of course today it's not making as drastic of a difference as it was earlier, but here are some screen shots.  The first with just the 2 aps, and the 2nd with all three.

Hi

 

So looking at the two screen shots you sent through.

 

Both LgeConf and SrvWest are running on Channel 11 and may be interesting with each other depending on how far apart they are.

 

You also note that SrvWest is reporting that the noise level is very high. This could be caused by interference from LgeConf or from other surrounding AP's that are in your area.

 

In the RF options at the top of the instant is Band Steering Mode set to prefer 5Ghz. This can encourage devices that support both 2.4ghz and 5ghz to connect on 5ghz where you will probably have a lot more free channels around then on 2.4ghz where you only have three non overlapping channel to use.

 

In the RF settings if you click on the advanced settings you can also change the interference immunity levels which can also help for the AP's to work out what channel is the best for them to work to try and reduce interference.

 

I hope that helps.

 

Ryan

I have the channels set to Adaptive radio managemnet assigned.  Should I manually set them to certain channels?

 

Also, I have the Band Steering Mode set to Prefer 5Ghz already, but I'll change immunity levels and see what happens.

 

 

Thanks,

Nathan

---

@OnTheRocks wrote:

I have the channels set to Adaptive radio managemnet assigned.  Should I manually set them to certain channels?

 

Also, I have the Band Steering Mode set to Prefer 5Ghz already, but I'll change immunity levels and see what happens.

 

 

Thanks,

Nathan

---

You do not need to set them manually.  Do not change the immunity.  it is to deal with severe interference, and not for coverage issues.

 

 

Thanks Joseph, do you have any suggestions that may point me in the right direction?

Another issue we're having, come of the clients that connect to the APs cannot connect to some of our file servers.  It's kind of random, some do and some don't and it seems to be not the same clients every time either.  Wierd eh?

Do you have anything on your client to measure your signal strength?

 

inSSIDer is reporting about -65 dBm...

-65 dBm is about as pristine a signal as you can hope for in a typical deployment (e.g. not on the table top ;)).  So I would shy away from coverage being an issue.

As for the other pieces of the thread and you observation about file servers being reachable sometimes and not at others, wireshark/packet capture would be IMO the best way to diagnose that.  The goal being to see 'who has the ball' when the file share becomes unreachable...  

 

JF

Re: Attaching to File Servers:

 

I've been chasing a similar problem. I have 6 IAP-105's, Server 2003 AD network with 2 DC's.  The IAPs were having problems pinging either one or both DCs.  As there are shared resources on each (printers on one, Exchange on the other,) it would appear as if the DC was disconnected.  Could verify the wired path the APs  were taking by just connecting a laptop to the drop cable.  WOrking with support has mostly fixed this problem - by downgrading to OS 6.1.2.3-2.0.0.4.   4 of the APs appear rock solid now but two still will miss pinging one or both DCs consistently.

So, I've been working with Aruba Tech support for a few weeks regarding this issue of not being able to connect to your file share server.  After LOTS of packet captures and data dumps, it turns out that these babies have a firewall that is setup to block IP Spoofing.  Well our server has 2 NIC cards setup as a team for load bearing.  The IAP was detecting two different MAC addresses for 1 IP and started blocking one of the NICs.  The Aruba QA team was able to replicate the issue in house and the Develpoment team created us a new build with the IP Spoofing disabled.  We've installed that and everything seems to be working correctly now.

 

Thanks for everyone's input.

 

-Nate

I would suggest FOR TESTING to change the AP's on Monitoring and manually set the channel to 1 / 6 /11 (2.4 antenna) one of the 3 channels suggested and the one that has less interference use it on that AP - after do the same thing on the other.

After that just stay back and watch the statistics for 2 -3 days.

At the same time when you run inSSIDer do you see other AP's that have the same SSID (thus implying that they are connected to a controller that might mark your network as rogue and take action on it) - we had this happen to one of our clients - they forgot to advise the other network that they will change the SSID and "deploy a new network" and the clients were getting slow speed / disconnection from the WiFi network and other issues - once they marked our new SSID as Friend - every issue just disappeared.