Wireless Access

We recently moved to the Cisco 8821 WiFi handsets and they are working great if we don't change floors...

Currently running 20 Aruba IAP-225 with Instant OS version 6.5.4.3_61959 across two floors. All WiFi voice traffic is in its own SSID and the VLAN is shared with all other desktop phones. Phone's firmware is sip8821.11-0-3SR4-3 and seems to be working without issue when roaming from one AP to the other on the same floor. Moving between floors causes the handset to not hear anything anymore when a call is made to or from the device yet the other end can hear them. 

I've tweaked every setting I know to and upgraded firmwares to the latest. No option to advertise QBSS otherwise I'd give that a try. 

Anyone else having this issue or something similar? Our previous 7925G models worked great till Aruba stopped supporting the old ciphers forcing us to upgrade to the 8821. 

Do you have stairs or an elevator between floors?  What is your coverage there?

I nearly always have three or four out of four bars for signal strength with a very rarely dip to two out of four. The handeset never loses connectivity with WiFi, just loses the ability to hear the other end after roamin from one AP to another. Also confirmed this is happening while remaining on the same floor as well. Normally disabling then enabling WiFi resolves this though on occasion I have to do the disable/enable thing a second time for the handset's ability to hear again. 

The signal strength might not be worse, the but between floors the signal quality could be poor due to fireproofing.  Stairways and elevators are typically fireproofed with concrete and unless you find a way to specifically provide coverage in those areas, it is typically not expected to provide a quality voice connection.

If the problem is happening on the same floor you have a design issue that needs to be fixed.

Understood.

This building was setup by a certified vendor that completed a full site survey and the Cisco 7925g phones worked without issue. We only had to get rid of the 7925g due to old ciphers not being support by our Aruba IAP devices. Cisco doesn't certify their phones on other vendors hardware so was hoping Aruba had documentation with how things should be configured given our IAP and the handsets. 

would love to hear if anyone has any additional information on this. we recently moved to cisco 8821 wireless phones. have been experiencing the network drops, unregistering, one party not being able to hear the other, and issues with using different ringtones on lines. 

aruba iap 105, 205 and 135

firmware 6.4.4.8-4.2.4.9_61734

firmware rootfs8821.11-0-3SR6-15

call manager System version: 11.5.1.13901-3

Do you have end to end QOS configured?

not 100 percent sure but will say yes  seeing how the voice quality and is good when their phone is not trying to roam between APs. one thing is that when our Aruba system was setup the vendor had put our IAPs on one vlan (114) and when a device connects it uses another vlan (107) which leaves us with a trunk, therefore no "switchport voice vlan" command

We do not have QoS configured; haven't needed it. 

With more testing this is failing even on the same floor and only to SCCP phones. It is feeling like a PBX issue at this point. Working on a custom SIP profile now for the hardare in CUCM and I've noticed its behavior changing as I tweak but not resolved yet. 

Next step is to open a ticket with Cisco TAC I'm feeling. 

So the #1 problem with roaming is typically transmit power.  Could you message me the output of "show aps" or "show ap active"?

[redacted]

Do you have any idea what band your devices (8821s) operate on (2.4ghz or 5ghz)?

They can run on either and I've tried both.

If you allow them to run on more than one band at a time, roaming suffers, because it takes too long to scan too many channels.  I would just use a single band and limit it to only the channels you are broadcasting.  Your 5ghz ARM maximum transmit power should really be no more than 18 otherwise, you will have other roaming-related issues (sticky clients).

Alright. I'll play with those settings during my next maintenance opportunity. 

Thank you.