Wireless Access

Dear All,

i have A620 controller ( version 6.1.3.6) with 2 AP93 configured on it with WPA2 enterprise (AES) authentication.

APs are setup as

Name ▲ AP Group ▲ Status ▲ AP IP ▼Outer AP IP AP Type Switch IP .bg Clients .bg Channel .bg HT Mode .a Clients .a Channel .a HT Mode IPSEC Actions

correct me if i am wrong please , alot of noice on floor is it thats why poor signal quality and speed?

i have already A200 controller with 2 AP running on it (old wifi network) i was just testing it out how it goes, would try to turn off old wifi on weekend and see the results on noise levels and signal power

My main problem is that sitting users close to AP2 they are still connecting to AP1 with very low signal quality and speed of 1mbps and wont connect to AP2 which is like 10 feet away ?

can any body please guide me through how to sort this issue so i can do some testing on weekend?

Kind regards,

Abdul

Hi!

What is the reason that you are using channel 4 and channel 8?

For the noise floor you should check your environment with the spectrum monitoring feature if you have valid rfprotect license. You may also check what devices are possible causing the interference - this can be a microwave oven, cordless phone, bluetooth devices etc. and where the AP's are placed.

Btw. 10 feet does not seem to be too far, is this a test environment?

What kind of devices do have roaming issues?

The roaming is very client specific, however, you can set some parameters on the controller to provide better roaming.

you can set the "validate-pmkid" in the dot1x profile

you can also try "handoff-assist" in the rf profile or try to set the "local probe response treshold" in the advanced ssid profile.

You may find detailed explanation in the ArubaOS User Guide regarding these features.

Forgot to mention that you also need to make sure your client has up-to-date drivers. On some clients you can set the roaming aggressiveness (on Intel chipsets for example) you may check this, too.

Dear Zshusveti,

Thank you for your valuble reply, it didnt specify any channel thats why AP was selecting any avaiable channels but i did made some changes, i have set APs on Channel 1 and max EIRP to 15 as  i thought to check what allowed MAX EIRP for country code AE is .

show ap allowed-max-EIRP ap-name ap1 country-code AE

Channel  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10  11  12  13  14  36  40  44  48  52  56 60  64  100  104  108  112  116  120  124  128  132  136  140  149  153  157  161  165
-------  -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   -   --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  -- --  --  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---
b        16  15  14  14  13  13  13  13  13  13  14  14  15  *   *   *   *   *   *   *  *   *   *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
g/a      15  15  14  14  13  13  13  13  13  13  13  13  13  *   22  21  21  21  21  21 20  20  25   25   25   24   24   24   24   24   23   23   23   *    *    *    *    *
HT 20    15  15  14  14  13  13  13  13  13  13  13  13  13  *   22  21  21  21  21  21 20  20  25   24   24   24   24   24   23   23   23   23   23   *    *    *    *    *
HT 40    15  14  14  14  14  13  13  13  13  13  13  13  13  *   21  21  21  20  20  19 19  19  25   24   24   24   24   24   23   23   23   23   23 

Handoff-assist is on and set to value 50

local prode response treshold is set to value 20

i couldnt find the validate-pmkid in dot1x profile if possible can you give me command or till then i will try to firgure out how to enable it.

first posit i mention i think the noise is too hight becasue of old A200 controller with two AP running and i can see them interfaring and showing those as roudge, which i can only turn off on week end only :( and run further tests which can i think resolve my signal issue ( please advice if iam correct)

i was testing romaing issue on updated new wireless cards and both of those laptop dont support  802.11K feature and will not connect to AP2 no matter how far and on low signal i get even it drop the signal out.

this is the problem as user is like 10 feet as you said is not too far should connect to AP2 (10 feet away) and is still connecting to AP1 and signal is very low.

i have the license for spectrum and i will try to do as you advised.

What should normaly be noise threshold as i have set mine to 0 -dBm

First of all I would suggest you to let ARM manage the channel and tx power settings at least while you are troubleshooting the roaming issues.

Validate PMKID can be found in All profiles - wireless lan - 802.1x authentication profile - choose the one which is assigned to your ap group and ssid - advanced tab (middle right section)

First try to enable only the local probe response treshold feature and disable handoff assist. If the local probe response treshold does not help you may try the handoff assist.

Also make sure the spectrum load balancing feature is disabled while local probe response treshold is enabled.

You may also try to disable the low data rates in the SSID profile.

Hi Again,

i did as you advised, there was alot change in speed which was good, still client romaing didnt work.

i turn off the AP1 and let the Ap2 on and try to see if a client can even connect to it, client was able to connect

worst thing was that like 2 metters away i was connected with 2 bars and 300 mbps , if i go away like 5 meter gone cannot find the ssid ?

may be location issue so removed it from there plugged at the same spot where AP2 was same issue.

now what to do with this AP2 , shall i restore it to factory setting and re-set it up ?

Thanks

Abdul

AP received configuration see below any idea guys ?

What kind of devices are you using for testing?

You should try the roaming with different devices like iOS device, Android, Windows laptop etc. Do you have the same issue with all of these?

Have you tried to change the romaing aggressiveness on any of the clients?

When you are 5 meter away from the AP you can not even see the SSID on the client? This sounds strange.

If you want to reset the AP use the purgeenv command not the factory reset!

I used , Dell , IBM & HP laptop with required thing enabled on wireless card  win xp and win 7,Iphone 5s , Samsung S2 , S3  HTC (all runing 4.0 andriod)

same having signal issue with AP2 (i have took off the AP1)

as for when all these devices connected to AP1 samsung devices were only who will drop out the connection while still connected to  AP1  as for HTC and laptops they work all good  and was not switching to AP 2 if near to AP2 and AP1 signal is low.

ok i will try purge AP2 and see if fix any issues on this and get back to you.

sorry forgot to add some thing , when 5 meet away i can see SSID and its connected  with only showign 2 bar on signal and if i go away like 10 meters its gone finish it comes and go with one bar and unable to connect.

if i refresh like 10 times it shows up once only

Did you have a chance to check the RF environment with a spectrum monitor AP?

AP2 still low on signal , I did RF spectrum thing I seen to much noise but a lot of interference. do you think if interference there might be effecting the AP2 ?

if so i will test this signal issue on week end when i turn off old wireless.

ok user roaming problem is resolved i turn on the AP1 and went  right next to AP2 and i switch the client to AP2.

Thanks for helping me with Roaming issue.

will update this post when happeneds on weekend, also please advise you want me to do any other testing that can help me.

Can you confirm that the roaming is solved now?

What noise floor do you have? What kind of interfering devices you see in the spectrum analysis?

You may run through this VRD: http://www.arubanetworks.com/wp-content/uploads/DG_Roaming.pdf - it can definitely help to further optimize your network for roaming.

Yes the roaming issue has been resolved .

AP1 -92 and AP2 -99 noise lvl.

2 AP from my old wireless network and 2 very low near by company wireless network 1 AP each.

sure i will check it out and update you

-99 noise floor should not be an issue, it is quite good

Hi Zshuveti,

a question , as you know currently i am on G 2.4 ghz band and i would like to test out G 5ghz over the weekend to see if the AP2 signal approves, can you guide me how can i achive  that ?

as i noticed where i have mounted AP 2  on false ceiling  near by there are like 3 Split roof AC mounted above the flase ceiling that might be killing AP2 strength so would like to test out 5 ghz  and see if that helps me out.

Please advice.

Many thanks.

Abdul

Really this AP2 is gonna push me off the cliff.

i put the AP1 in the same position as in AP2 , it works all good  with same signal strength as in old location.

i place AP2 in to AP1 fix location and it still same signal dies out after 10 meter.

i was thinking it might be those air cons killing it but i dont think so as AP1 works great.

really can some body help me with this AP2  as i see its on same policy group as AP2 so why ? could it be hardware fault ?

update on AP2 signal issue , called up Aruba support team they looked in  run tests and stuff, end of the AP  hardware is faulty , they will replace it and lets see  ^_^

Good to hear that the problem has been identified. I guess everything works for now, right?