Wireless Access

Hi all,

I'm encountering a weird problem at 2 of my schools.  At School #1, we have two AP-85s set up as mesh portals, and we *had* 3 AP-85s as mesh points.  One portal broadcasts to a point that then covers the baseball field.  the other portal broadcasts to two points, one that covers the football field, and one that covers the groundskeeper's shed.  The reason I say we "had" 3 AP-85s as points is because the AP-85 that covered the football field died, and was replaced with an AP-175.  Aside from the mesh, School #1's infrastructure consists of AP-65s and 70s.

School #2 has a simpler setup -- one AP-175 portal and one AP-175 point, which covers their football field.  The rest of their infrastructure is AP-105s and 124s, since it was installed several years after School #1.

Everything has worked fine up through ArubaOS 6.1.2.8.  When I tried to upgrade to 6.1.3.3, though, my AP-175 point at School #2 stopped communicating.  I had no trouble with the AP-85s at School #1.  The AP-175 at School #1 had not yet been installed when I first tried the upgrade, so at that point, I was unable to determine if the problem at School #2 was an isolated incident.  It was the only site in our district with AP-175s, and these two schools are the only ones with any mesh at all.

At School #2, the building where the AP-175 portal is installed is the Locker Room.  The building next to it, Building D2, has an AP-124 with an outdoor antenna.  Building D2 is farther from the football field than the Locker Room.  The antenna doesn't face directly to the football field, but even with my football field mesh point disconnected, I can still receive a pretty good signal from the D2 access point.  This was very useful when I was having some difficulty provisioning the football pressbox mesh point.

After upgrading to 6.1.3.3, my mesh point AP-175 in the football press box could no longer find its master controller.  In addition, I noticed that my laptop could no longer receive a signal from the Building D2 AP.  Upon connecting my serial console to the AP-175, I saw that it was still running the 6.1.2.8 code -- it had never been able to update.

I tried downgrading the controller at School #2 back to 6.1.2.8, and then everything worked.

My experience here tells me that soemthing in the 6.1.3.3 update somehow reduces the signal strength of the antennas on AP-124s and AP-175s.  I don't know how or why, but this appears to be what is going on.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Thanks!

Here's an update on this situation.

First, I forgot to mention in the previous post that I had also tried 6.1.3.2 with the same result.

The update for now is that I just tried the same thing with 6.1.3.4.  At School #1, everything came up.  But at School #2, I still had the same problem, so I'm reverting both back to 6.1.2.8.  Please note that for this experiment, I did not first update my master controller to 6.1.3.4.

I suspect the reason why everything worked at School #1 is because there, the portal is an AP-85, whereas at School #2, the portal is an AP-175.  Whatever this issue is seems to affect, at least for us, only AP-175s and AP-124s.

Please open a support case for this, so that they can dig into the details of your situation and understand why it did not come up.  There are quite a few variables in this deployment that need to be explored.

I actually did open up a TAC case for this when it first happened, but we weren't able to resolve the issue.  They had me try a few things, which unfortunately, did not work.  I was just wondering if anyone else had encountered similar issues.

If you were on the updated version of code, support probably would have asked you to get into the mesh point console and run a few commands to see if it was attempting to connect to the mesh portal.  If you were not on the updated version of code, the logs needed to troubleshoot would be gone, and they could not guess what is happening.

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@cjoseph wrote:

If you were on the updated version of code, support probably would have asked you to get into the mesh point console and run a few commands to see if it was attempting to connect to the mesh portal.  If you were not on the updated version of code, the logs needed to troubleshoot would be gone, and they could not guess what is happening.

 

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Yeah, that was the case for me.  The point had not yet updated its code.  I'm guessing that in a mesh setup, the portals update first, then after they come back up, the points reconnect and then they update.  If the portal wasn't putting out as much signal strength after the update as it was before, then the point couldn't see it to reconnect and then be able to update.

The console debug would have shown the point seeing a possible mesh connection and the signal strength.  You would also have to verify that you see the mesh SSID on the other side.

I've been reading up on some RF basics like signal strength and SNR.  Is there a way to see what the signal strength is on a particular mesh portal?  I'd be interested to see what the values are before and after an update from 6.1.2.8 to 6.1.3.4.

Thanks!

"show ap active" will tell you that.  I am not sure that the signal strength of a device would change so drastically between builds.  There could be some code issue where a mesh point that is on a lower version of code does not mesh with the newer upgraded portal for some reason or the AP might have crashed.  

Those two are more likely and that is why the console output on the mesh point after it is upgraded is critical.

I don't think the AP crashed (assuming you're referring to the point) because I can console into it and I see it up and running, but it can never find the portal.  Taking the AP down is, unfortunately, a difficult task.  Otherwise, I could just take it down and plug it in to the hardwired network somewhere, let it upgrade, and then see if it works.

Actually, is there a way to TFTP a code update directly to an AP?

I had some initial problems getting the AP to work when it was first installed.  Fortunately, at that time, with the setup I described in my original post, I was able to connect my laptop to the wireless network using the AP-124 on the D2 building, then using my small PoE switch and configuring my laptop's network settings to be a wireless bridge, I was able to connect the mesh point AP (before it was configured as such) through my laptop's wireless bridge, so it could then communicate with the controller and I could provision it through normal means.

The problem with that is that after updating to the 6.1.3.x code, the signal off of the D2 building's AP-124 was no longer reaching out to the football pressbox where my mesh point is, so I couldn't just reset the point AP to defaults and try to reprovision it using my wireless bridge.

I tried the "sh ap active" command on the local controller.  This is the output I got (IP address has been masked).  The first AP listed is the mesh portal on the locker room.  The second one is the D2 building AP-124.

Name                                     Group      IP Address  11g Clients  11g Ch/EIRP/MaxEIRP  11a Clients  11a Ch/EIRP/MaxEIRP       AP Type  Flags  Uptime         Outer IP
----                                     -----      ----------  -----------  -------------------  -----------  -------------------       -------  -----  ------         --------
WVHS_ArubaAP_LockerRm_MeshPortal         WVHS-Mesh  192.168.x.x  0            AP:HT:1/20/20        1            MPP+AP:HT:157+/22.5/22.5  175P     daM    8d:1h:43m:23s  N/A
WVHS_ArubaAP_RmD120_Ext                  WVHS       192.168.x.y  0            AP:HT:6/23.5/23.5    0            AP:HT:149+/19/19          124      Eda    8d:1h:42m:4s   N/A


I don't know what the EIRP and MaxEIRP values are trying to tell me, but should I upgrade the code again and then compare the results?

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@bnewall wrote:

I don't think the AP crashed (assuming you're referring to the point) because I can console into it and I see it up and running, but it can never find the portal.  Taking the AP down is, unfortunately, a difficult task.  Otherwise, I could just take it down and plug it in to the hardwired network somewhere, let it upgrade, and then see if it works.

 

Actually, is there a way to TFTP a code update directly to an AP?

 

I had some initial problems getting the AP to work when it was first installed.  Fortunately, at that time, with the setup I described in my original post, I was able to connect my laptop to the wireless network using the AP-124 on the D2 building, then using my small PoE switch and configuring my laptop's network settings to be a wireless bridge, I was able to connect the mesh point AP (before it was configured as such) through my laptop's wireless bridge, so it could then communicate with the controller and I could provision it through normal means.

 

The problem with that is that after updating to the 6.1.3.x code, the signal off of the D2 building's AP-124 was no longer reaching out to the football pressbox where my mesh point is, so I couldn't just reset the point AP to defaults and try to reprovision it using my wireless bridge.

 

I tried the "sh ap active" command on the local controller.  This is the output I got (IP address has been masked).  The first AP listed is the mesh portal on the locker room.  The second one is the D2 building AP-124.

 

Name                                     Group      IP Address  11g Clients  11g Ch/EIRP/MaxEIRP  11a Clients  11a Ch/EIRP/MaxEIRP       AP Type  Flags  Uptime         Outer IP
----                                     -----      ----------  -----------  -------------------  -----------  -------------------       -------  -----  ------         --------
WVHS_ArubaAP_LockerRm_MeshPortal         WVHS-Mesh  192.168.x.x  0            AP:HT:1/20/20        1            MPP+AP:HT:157+/22.5/22.5  175P     daM    8d:1h:43m:23s  N/A
WVHS_ArubaAP_RmD120_Ext                  WVHS       192.168.x.y  0            AP:HT:6/23.5/23.5    0            AP:HT:149+/19/19          124      Eda    8d:1h:42m:4s   N/A


I don't know what the EIRP and MaxEIRP values are trying to tell me, but should I upgrade the code again and then compare the results?

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- Just being at the console does not tell you everything about the access point.  You should contact support so that they can get the logs from that AP to see what is happening

- There is no way to TFTP code directly to an ap that is a mesh point

- The mesh AP should connect to the portal and just update from the master controller

- The parameters you have on the AP show that the AP is at full power on both bands

- You might want to measure the signal strength of the mesh SSID at the far AP to see if you are getting a signal.  The signal on the AP might be so narrow that you might not be able to see it, though.

You could put another Mesh AP out there that works on the new code, and bridge his ethernet port.  You would then purge the non-working mesh AP and bring him up with the ethernet port.

Nothing is more definitive than the logs on an AP in explaining why it is not working.

Hi all,

I'm finally revisiting this again after a couple of months.  I just upgraded all of our controllers to 6.1.3.5, and am having the same issue.  I will, at some point in the very near future, go to the site and try to take down the mesh point AP, take it on campus, hardwire it, and upgrade it.  I will then take it back out to the pressbox and see if it connects (but I suspect it won't).  I'll also open up a new TAC case at that point and see what we can find out.