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!