Wireless Access

I'm getting some complaints of clients getting disconnected from wifi.  In every case, I'm seeing a client match event, with band steering being the reason.  It seems that going from 2.4GHz to 5GHz is disruptive to my clients.  Anyone else notice this?

I have not personally seen this.

Very interersting as I have client match enabled as well.

What model AP and firmware?
Are they roaming between APs when the band-steering happens? That's a long shot question..

225's & 6.4.

 

The from/to AP is the same in the client match message so I assume it's safe to say it isn't a client roam.

thecompnerd,

 

If you could let us know what OS and network card of client and the output of "show ap association client-mac <mac of client>" that would be helpful.

 

If your clientmatch settings were changed, and/or the difference in power between the AP on the 2.4ghz vs. the 5ghz is significant enough, that could play a factor.  We probably need to understand how everything is configured to have a chance to explain what could be going on.

 

 

Did this get resolved?  I am seeing the same thing at my location.  We have ap105s and ap65s  We have multiple dorms and it is happening in all of them.

No resolution, just workaround. I'm turning off 2.4ghz for this SSID so I
don't have to deal with it.

How long ago did you do this and were there any other issues that came up because you shut it down?

Doing it this weekend.

I have other networks that are 5ghz only and it's not a problem for us
because we've gotten rid of all 2.4 only devices. Not everyone has this
luxury but thankfully its not a problem for us.

Do your homework and find out if you have any 2.4 only devices. If you only
have a few, maybe you can justify turning it off and upgrading those
devices.

it is your choise but you i believe have totally different environment then the OP, you have different APs , perhaps different OS version and seeing the term dorms probably no control over your clients.

 

start a new thread will full info and perhaps someone here can provide some advise on what to try in your specific situation. else you can also always try TAC.

You see, boneyard is more observant than me. I didnt realize you said dorm
room. So yeah.. you're probably stuck with leaving 2.4 on and figuring out
how to improve the band steering issue.

yes dorms so no removing 2.4

 

Colin,

Thanks for the input.  We have no power over 18 but we do mix 65 with 105.  I will configure one dorm to be only 105s and see what happens.  Then start a new post or open a ticket.

 

Thanks again to everyone.

Doctora,

 

It might be less resource intensive if you just uncheck clientmatch in your ARM profile so that all of your access points are just using legacy bandsteering.  That would take Clientmatch out of the picture and allow you to focus on anything else that might be contributing to your issue.

I turned off Client match and I am still getting the band steer.  I opened a ticket with aruba support and the increased the power on some of the access points.  This did not correct the issue.  I am at a loss.  I will continue to work with Aruba support but I was wondering if anyone here had any ideas.  

Doctora,

 

Do you have band steering enabled in the Virtual AP profile?

 

I thought that when I disabled client match that I disabled band steer.  The answer is I dont know.  I looked throught the virtual AP settings and I was not able to find Band Steer

Found it.  It is on the SSID profile not the ap group.  this will affect the entire campus.

It should be in the Virtual AP profile.

Doctora

Did you every get your problem solved with disconnects?  We have similar problems at our locations.  We are medical clinic with multiple patient rooms.  We have worked with Aruba support in increasing strength of our AP's, but nothing has worked.  We have updated our client drivers.  However, we still see Client Match and dropped packets.  If anyone that has been experiencing this problem and has solution, I would appreicte it if you can post it here.  

 

Do you want to start a new thread with all of your specifics, so that we can focus in your problem?

Can you also PM me your tac case #?

Yeah, we ultimately fixed this by dropping 2.4GHz and using 5GHz only for our SSID.  Fortunately, we're able to do this as we don't have legacy equipment and refresh equipment often.  Not everyone has this luxury.

Perhaps fine tuning radio transmit power will help?

 

As Colin suggested another post with your exact issues would be appropriate.

Unfornately, we still have some 2.4Ghz devices left in our network.  However they will be phased out in next few months.  The other day we tried the opposite of disabling the 5Ghz radio since we had no problems when we Cisco AP's that only used 2.4GHz, but that was a mistake.  We experienced more disconnects so we reenable the radio.  We have 10 locations where users are experiencing disconnects frequently which makes it difficult to troubleshoot.  We have had Heat Map Surveys done by Aruba at our locations to check AP placements.  We have added AP's to some of our locations, but still experiencing problems.  We are working with Aruba Support on this problem for the past couple months, but I was just wanting to see if anyone in the field found any solutions. 

We did fix the issues but it took more than one step. One thing I know that we did was reduce the power on one of the frequencies ( can't remember which one).  This resulted in users who had the ability to access either frequency to be steered toward one and stay off frequencies that devices had no choice to use.

 

I know this is not clear but I did not come up with the fix.

 

We hired a parttime person going to a local community college and getting a networking degree.  I told him his only job was to learn the Airwave system and figure out problems.  He got it going but he is off on Military Drill.  I will have him reply in more detail when he gets back next week. .

The aforementioned community college part-time worker here. The default setting for the APs RF setting was to keep it's factory 2.4 and 5GHz channels, so i turned on adaptive radio management for both frequencies (single-band mode first then maintain after the ap's have properly negotiated channels).  Also 2.4 had 40 MHz channels enabled so i limited it to 20 MHz channels.   2.4 had a ton of overlapping channels and the power was maxed out so this caused alot of issues.  I turned legacy band steering off (virtual ap profile), and turned client match on (Adaptive Radio Management profile).  We replaced all the Ap-65s with 105s.  In areas overpopulated with APs i restricted the power (more so on the 2.4 side so clients would prefer 5 GHz without client match).  Our network's problem were fixed.  I hope this helps if you are still having issues.

airheaduser and JGuthrie

Thank you for the information.  Aruba support has helped us tweaked our settings with 2.4 to limit to 20 MHz channel.  They have turned off legacy band steering and using client match.   They have adjusted our power.  However, we still have some disconnects.  We are using AP 205s.  We had Cisco AP’s before replacing them with Aruba’s but there were no problems with disconnects with those AP’s.  When we bought the Aruba APs, we were told we would get better coverage over the Cisco AP’s, but we have found that was not true.  We have had to add additional Aruba AP’s in our locations which was unplanned especially now using 5 GHz.   Granted the Cisco AP’s were only using 2.4 GHz requiring fewer Aps.  It would have been nice to know this up front before investing in this solution. 

5 GHz doesn't propagate through material as well as 2.4 so I wouldn't blame Aruba for that issue. 

Thanks for all the info.  I think I will start a new thread.

 

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@doctora wrote:

Did this get resolved?  I am seeing the same thing at my location.  We have ap105s and ap65s  We have multiple dorms and it is happening in all of them.

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Doctora,

 

Clientmatch is not active on non-802.11n access points.  In that situation, whatever is configured in the Virtual AP "Band Steering" field is what is executed on those access points.  Legacy band steering does not work the same way that clientmatch does.  Please check to see if you have overlap between your AP65s and AP105s to see that is why things are uneven.

 

Lastly, you can acheive a perfectly functioning network without band steering or clientmatch as long as the network is designed properly.  If you have locations where the transmit power on an access point is above 18, there are many situations where clients will cause disconnects, just from hanging onto those access points too long.

 

Have you opened a tac case to make sure you have everything configured to make this work successfully?

 

 

It can be.  The question is whether not having it is equally disruptive -- if it is off, do all your clients start getting disconnects or performance problems due to congestion on the g band?  This is what you have to answer and the answer will be particular to your network conditions, and may have to be reassessed from time to time as client behavior changes.

 

Also, you can tune it.  You may want to check out this here as it will suggest parameters for certain settings:

 

https://ase.arubanetworks.com/solutions/id/75