Wireless Access

We obtained some new Dell E7440 laptops with Intel dual band wireless-ac 7260 wireless cards installed. They would not connect to captive portal for guest access nor to any of our other SSID's using 802.1x.  We got captive portal access by turning off band steering. 

After further testing we were able to turn that back on on the controller and instead turn off the a band on the laptop. By default it is set to a/b/g and we set it to b/g to get it to connect.  Notified Aruba of the issue as well.

Thought this post might help someone that tries using the same chipset and is unable to connect.

FYI,

Ian

The latest 16.x driver release seems to fix many of the stability issues with the 7260.

We tried the 16.1.5 driver version and that did not fix the issue. We are running 6.3.1.1 code and also had the issue on 6.1.3.7 code on the controllers. 

Sorry should have added that the OS is Windows 8.1

We found the issues on windows 7 but sounds like win 8.1 doesn't have the issues?

You might find you're hitting a similar issue to what I've posted about elsewhere. Granted, your adapter is different, but more or less all vendors make these kind of mistake in their haste to get products to market quickly.

http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Unified-Wired-Wireless-Access/802-11ac-adapters-warning-heads-up/m-p/121489

I've found some AC adapters are shipping internationally with the wrong regional channel settings.

A quick check with something like Inssider will tell you for sure. That's how I confirmed it.

Thanks.

We hit this issue again but with a different Intel card and Win 8.1.  The card is an Intel Centrino N 6235.  Similar resolution by disabling the A band on the adapter properties

I have spent time with Intel and Aruba on this as I'm experiencing the same issue. After about an hour of explaining to the Aruba guy that the problem wasn't related to enabling/disabling HT/VHT mode on the wifi card, and eventually being able to convince him that disabling the A radio enables connections to be made, we've got a call on hold to arrange for a time to do some further testing. Meanwhile, Dell have agreed to replace the wifi chip with a Broadcom one, since they seem to have experienced problems with the AC 7260. If I can get an agreed RMA date for them, I might not bother with further troubleshooting, but wanted to add my own experience to this thread in case others get the same issue.

zebulebu,

Do you mind telling us what driver version on the Intel wireless AC 7260?

Pretty much every major (and some minor) revisions I've been able to get my hands on. Laptops shipped with 16.1.0.13, I have tested up to 16.10.0.5

thank you.

i've had one of my customers recently working through a similar problem with HP / Intel. turned out there was some issue with the drivers and i think it was 16.10 latest version that fixed it. Unsure of the actual card version though.

Well, Scottdoorey,

When you know, let US know...

l'll flick them an email to find out as i wasn't part of the final resolution. If you have internal visibility of cases, take a look at case #1508464

scott

ok got some answers.

may not be entirely relevant as the client devices weren't 11ac but the AP's were., the client was using Intel CentrinoAdvanced-N 6200 series e.g. 6230 and 6235 and were having association and dropout issues with the AP-225s.

Upgrading controllers to 6.3.1.3 and Intel release version 16.10.0.5 - 02/13/2014 which seemed to improve the performance greatly.

hopefully this is of some help

Thanks for the info, scottdoorey.

We were having an issue where none of our 7260 clients could connect via 802.11a, disabling 802.11a, leaving b/g enabled on the NIC was the only way to get connectivity. 

I worked with Aruba support here in Australia and Intel engineering to determine that there was a bug in the driver in handling "Quiet IE" packets. We disabled quiet IE on the controller as a fix while the driver fix is tested and goes into production. 

Our configuration is a 3400 controller and AP65's. 

Great - sounds like there are two workarounds - disabling QuieIE on the controller - or - disabling 802.11k on the controller.  We opted for disabling 802.11k on the controller since we aren't doing voice over wifi and the intel clients are able to connect now.

Ian

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@nsghs wrote:

We were having an issue where none of our 7260 clients could connect via 802.11a, disabling 802.11a, leaving b/g enabled on the NIC was the only way to get connectivity. 

 

I worked with Aruba support here in Australia and Intel engineering to determine that there was a bug in the driver in handling "Quiet IE" packets. We disabled quiet IE on the controller as a fix while the driver fix is tested and goes into production. 

 

Our configuration is a 3400 controller and AP65's. 

---

this was it for us. OS X devices with ac cards worked fine, interestingly, but our campus's Lenovo Thinkpad Yogas, and new Dells (don't remember the model off the top of my head) all have the Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 card. I updated to the latest driver from the Lenovo support site (17.0.2.5 - 2014-0416) for the Yoga I'm troubleshooting with, but that still didn't work.

Disabling "Advertise Quiet IE" did the trick, however, can someone tell me what the ramifications of disabling this IE are? I'll put my Google-Fu to use in the meantime, but if someone could let me know, that'd be awesome. 

Is this an Intel issue or an Aruba issue?

I too am having this exact issue,

and would like to know

Disabling "Advertise Quiet IE" did the trick, however, can someone tell me what the ramifications of disabling this IE are? I'll put my Google-Fu to use in the meantime, but if someone could let me know, that'd be awesome. 

It is a workaround specifically for the Intel Client.  You can just turn off 802.11k (it is off by default) and completely sidestep this issue.  Many clients do not support 802.11k, anyways so there is little or any damage that is done.

Does Aruba have any resolution for this I'm working with TAC now but they seem to be focused on updating the driver? We are experiencing random disconnects the debug log is showing deauth requested by the laptop. I have updated the driver on 1 laptop did not improve it. You can review my TAC case 1837356

kell490,

I looked at the case and your logs and I have a few questions;

- Is there a reason that you have 6 to 8 SSIDs being broadcast from each AP?

- Is there a reason that you don't have Drop Broadcast and Multicast (broadcast filter all) enabled on all of your Virtual APs?

- Is there a reason that you have your AP power above 18 on each band (some are at the maximum)?

- Is there a reason that you are running 80mhz channels on your access points?

I am asking those questions because any of the 4 issues above could create the random dropouts that you are seeing for all your clients, not just intel clients..  Please check out the WLAN optimization section in the 802.11ac VRD here:  http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Validated-Reference-Design/Aruba-802-11ac-Networks/ta-p/242637

3 of the ssid's are going to be removed soon I know there is some clean up that needs to be done I don't think this issue has anything to do with those problems. This issue I'm having with the dell laptops where if I use a lenovo laptop in the same room those laptops are not disconnected. We have an access point installed in the room. 

There are some problems that only show up when the environment is bad enough.  The combination of those 4 things  or even individually could create an environment that your Dell laptop is ill equipped to handle.  You first need to improve the entire environment for all devices, and then if things are still going wrong, you need to focus on the individual device(s) that still have problems.  There is alot of room for improvement in your environment, and some are as easy as a checkbox or changing a number.  I suggest you look at the 802.11ac VRD under WLAN optimization to clean up your environment before you proceed; that way you will now if it is your environment or the client.  NOT cleaning up the environment will make you unsure whether it is your environment or just this client.

Yes I agree and I'm planning on cleaning it up that is my goal this month. I will read over that VRD thanks.  

kell490,

You don't have to read the whole VRD.  Just search for WLAN optimization.  You can make simple changes soon and measure their effectiveness immediately.  If you need help please PM me and we can schedule something.

In the end, we just want to remove anything that could be causing your issue, so that the problem  and the resolution is clearer.