Wireless Access

My WLAN clients are experiancing instable network connection. They are disconnected from the network and sometimes they have to manually reconnect or sometimes even disable and re-enable the Wireless Interface before it reconnects to the network. I therefore debugged some of the clients and attached is some of the debug results. Can someone explain what is wrong from the debug attached:

 

Thanks in advance:

.

 

Hi cjoseph,

 

Thanks for the quick response. I have Aruber AP-135s deployed with OmniAccess4504XM controller. This problem started about 2 weeks ago. Most of the clients are windows clients with some few Mac clients as well. I am using "wpa2-psk-aes" encryption.

 

Thanks and standing by for your response.

How many access points do you have?
Do the wireless clients share a vlan with wired clients?

There are 32 AP-135s deployed. The internal clients are on the management VLAN 1 and guest clients are on VLAN 32. These VLANS are used by just the WLAN clients and do not share with the wired clients.

Do you have "drop broadcast and unknown multicast" enabled on all of your virtual APS?

Yes i do, I have enabled "Drop Broadcast and Unknown Multicast" as well as "Convert Broadcast ARP requests to unicast"

What is the ARM min and max power on your access points?

Max Tx EIRP = 18

Min  Tx EIRP = 12

Did you open a TAC case?

Not yet, was planning to exhaust my options here before i do that. Can you explain the statement below, it was in the debug results and i do not know what it means or what is causing that.:

 

Jan 22 16:04:30     mdns    ssdp_parse_query_packet 357 QUERY from client:4c:80:93:90:bc:35 sid urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:InternetGatewayDevice:1 dropped: service not present!

 

 

That has to do with Air group, but nothing to do with connectivity. If your network is impaired, you should open a TAC case first. On this forum, we can only guess without logs and other important information.

Okay, thanks very much for your assistance. Usually TAC takes a longer time, i can provide the necessary logs and configurations that will be necessary to help you help me.

You can still ask here. It is best to do both, however.

Is your problem, happening to specific clients, in specific locations or at specific times?

Mostly different clients at different times. But there are some specific clients who experience that more because they make heavy use of the wlan mostly.

What version of code are you running right now?

 

I am runninng the latest firmware : AOS-W 6.4.2.2

What is the output of "show ap essid" ?

 

(Master) #show ap essid

ESSID Summary
-------------
ESSID          APs  Clients  VLAN(s)  Encryption
-----          ---  -------  -------  ----------
GuestWLAN  32   0        32       Open
WLAN1       32   451      1        WPA2 PSK AES
Num ESSID:2

What is the output of "show ap association | include Total"

(Master) #show ap association | include Total
Total num of 5G capable clients:437
Total num of 5G capable clients in 2.4G band:172
Total num of 5G capable clients in 5G band:265
Total num of 2.4G only clients:0

If you are using 40mhz channels, have you considered using 20 mhz channels to increase reuse and decrease contention?

 

Thanks very much for the suggestion joseph, if you say that is a best practice then sure i will. Now a client just complained of a roaming situation. After moving from one point of the office to another, even though the client still remains connected.

It is not necessarily a best practice.  It is a suggestion since your clients are overwhelmingly 5ghz.

 

For that user who just had the issue, let's have the output of:

 

show ap active ap-name <the name of that ap>

 

show ap arm state ap-name <the name of that ap>

 

output of show ap active:

 

Active AP Table
---------------
Name                     Group    IP Address     11g Clients  11g Ch/EIRP/MaxEIR                                                                                                             P  11a Clients  11a Ch/EIRP/MaxEIRP  AP Type    Flags  Uptime         Outer IP
----                     -----    ----------     -----------  ------------------                                                                                                             -  -----------  -------------------  -------    -----  ------         --------
AP167-9c:1c:12:c4:19:3c  default  192.168.1.167  0            APM                                                                                                                               11           AP:HT:116+/18/22.5   OAW-AP135  A2da   37d:6h:10m:8s  N/A

Flags: 1 = 802.1x authenticated AP; 2 = Using IKE version 2;
       A = Enet1 in active/standby mode;  B = Battery Boost On; C = Cellular;
       D = Disconn. Extra Calls On; E = Wired AP enabled; F = AP failed 802.1x a                                                                                                             uthentication;
       H = Hotspot Enabled; K = 802.11K Enabled; L = Client Balancing Enabled; M                                                                                                              = Mesh;
       N = 802.11b protection disabled; P = PPPOE; R = Remote AP;
       S = AP connected as standby; X = Maintenance Mode;
       a = Reduce ARP packets in the air; d = Drop Mcast/Bcast On; u = Custom-Ce                                                                                                             rt RAP;
       r = 802.11r Enabled

Channel followed by "*" indicates channel selected due to unsupported configured channel.
"Spectrum" followed by "^" indicates Local Spectrum Override in effect.

Num APs:1

80211a ESSID WLAN1 Stats
----------------------------
Parameter                            Value
---------                            -----
Channel                              116
Channel Frame Retry Rate(%)          0
Channel Frame Low Speed Rate(%)      0
Channel Frame Non Unicast Rate(%)    0
Channel Frame Fragmentation Rate(%)  0
Channel Frame Error Rate(%)          0
Channel Bandwidth Rate(kbps)         0
Channel Noise                        92
BSSID                                9c:1c:12:c1:93:d1
BSS Frame Retry Rate(%)              0
BSS Frame Low Speed Rate(%)          0
BSS Frame Non Unicast Rate(%)        0
BSS Frame Fragmentation Rate(%)      0
BSS Frame Receive Error Rate(%)      0
BSS Bandwidth Rate(kbps)             0
BSS Tx Packets                       5230882
BSS Rx Packets                       10665892
BSS Tx Bytes                         2064979061
BSS Rx Bytes                         1076649370
BSS SNR                              30
BSS Tx Rate                          24 mbps
BSS Rx Rate                          -

80211a ESSID GuestWLAN Stats
---------------------------------
Parameter                            Value
---------                            -----
Channel                              116
Channel Frame Retry Rate(%)          0
Channel Frame Low Speed Rate(%)      0
Channel Frame Non Unicast Rate(%)    0
Channel Frame Fragmentation Rate(%)  0
Channel Frame Error Rate(%)          0
Channel Bandwidth Rate(kbps)         0
Channel Noise                        92
BSSID                                9c:1c:12:c1:93:d2
BSS Frame Retry Rate(%)              0
BSS Frame Low Speed Rate(%)          0
BSS Frame Non Unicast Rate(%)        0
BSS Frame Fragmentation Rate(%)      0
BSS Frame Receive Error Rate(%)      0
BSS Bandwidth Rate(kbps)             0
BSS Tx Packets                       1592615
BSS Rx Packets                       15409
BSS Tx Bytes                         256136900
BSS Rx Bytes                         217100
BSS SNR                              30
BSS Tx Rate                          N/A
BSS Rx Rate                          18 mbps

 

output of show ap arm state ap-name :

 

(Master) # show ap arm state ip-addr 192.168.1.167

APM-192.168.1.167:AP167-9c:1c:12:c4:19:3c
No Neighbor Data Found
Legend: R = Relevant, T = Total,  Neighbor Density = (Overlap/Neighbor's Density/ Overlap to local density ratio/ Overlap to neighbor's density ratio)

AP:AP167-9c:1c:12:c4:19:3c MAC:9c:1c:12:c1:93:d0 Channel:116 EIRP:18 Max EIRP:22.5 Edge:disable
Client Density:10 Valid neighbors: 7 Relevant neighbors: 4 Rx Probe Reports: 5970
Moves(T/S):3/3 Sticky(T/S):3/3 Bandsteer(T/S):0/0 Loadbal(T/S):0/0
Neighbor Data
-------------
Name                     IP Address     SNR (dB)  Path Loss (dB)  Channel/Pwr  Neighbor Density  Neighbors (R/T)  Relevant
----                     ----------     --------  --------------  -----------  ----------------  ---------------  --------
AP156-24:de:c6:c9:f0:f2  192.168.1.156  36        88              36/15        3/12/30/25         3/6             Yes
AP164-24:de:c6:c9:f1:02  192.168.1.164  38        86              100/18       10/16/100/62       4/6             Yes
AP151-9c:1c:12:c4:21:cc  192.168.1.151  37        90              100/18       0/5/0/0            5/8
AP168-9c:1c:12:c4:19:9a  192.168.1.168  32        91              60/18        2/10/20/20         6/7
d8:c7:c8:1b:1b:68        -              -         -               -            -                 -                -
AP166-9c:1c:12:c4:1a:16  192.168.1.166  30        83              40/18        10/16/100/62       7/11            Yes
AP174-9c:1c:12:c4:18:a6  192.168.1.174  0         96              52/18        0/11/0/0           4/4
Legend: R = Relevant, T = Total,  Neighbor Density = (Overlap/Neighbor's Density/ Overlap to local density ratio/ Overlap to neighbor's density ratio)

You have two problems.

 

Channel 100, 116, 60 are DFS channels and few if any clients can see or scan those channels regularly. 

 

The output of "show ap active" shows that you have an AP that is an APM, which means you have ARM mode aware enabled on the 2.4ghz side.

 

That pretty much means the access point is an Air Monitor on the 2.4ghz side, so it is not accepting clients.  On the 5ghz side it is on channel 116, which few clients even scan for, so that means that access point is effectively a paperweight, because no clients will attach to it.  This will definitely create a coverage hole and make your roaming issues worse.

 

- Remove the DFS channels from the regulatory domain profile

- In the ARM profile, set 40mhz channels to "none" so that you can regain some spectrum.

 

After some time observing that, we need to consider removing ARM mode aware from the 2.4ghz ARM profile.  If you are that dense on the 2.4ghz side, you might want to reduce the minimum TX in the ARM profile on the 2.4ghz side to 9 and the max to 12.

 

Thats makes a lot of sense, thanks for the insight. I will make the necessary changes and keep u updated.

Thanks very much


Sent from Samsung Mobile

Hello Mr.Charlie, I have the exact some issue.  What was your fix?   Please help share any findings.

 

Thanks

Tj