Wireless Access

Is anyone currently using the AP-515 model? I'd like to get raw feedback from customers currently utilizing them! Thanks in advance!

I am having a tough time getting them to provision properly 

What method are you using to provision them? What code version are your MM/Controllers using?

We are currently in our rollout for replacing old HP APs. We have four buildings and two of them already have 214/314 APs for a few years and are working great.

The other buildings get the new 514 with ANT-40. After replacing a few APs we noticed that nearly no client (except smartphones) could connect -> 802.11ax with some older Intel drivers will prevent them to connect. After disabling that (High Efficiency) everything as it should be.

 

Now we still have some problems that the roaming doesn't work great sometimes and some client are still unable to connect (approx. 50 out of 1000 devices). Will have to do some troubleshooting and logging and open a case. Even after disabling every "fast roaming" option the issue still exists.

At the end there will be around 60 514 APs in the two buildings.  

 

The performance itself is great on the APs as expected. We saw about 120 clients on a single AP and about 400 in this area with a total of 6 APs with no problem at lunch time. A lot better than our old HP solution.

 

I would also appreciate other comments on the experience so far.

Yeah, that Intel driver issue is a problem. They have posted an update, but I'm not sure it will get applied automatically through windows updates.

What Aruba code version are you running? I would suggest to upgrade to the latest 8.5 version.

We have the newest 8.5.0.2 running. Our connection problems seems to be completely random. We only have about 5 different notebooks running and only a few are having the problem. 

The client seems to be connected (limited connection) but receives no IP and doesn't show up in the "client" view of the Virtual Controller or AirWave. 

I will check tomorrow if I can see the devices associating to the AP itself (debug mgmt-frames)

Normally what I check in windows 10 clients are the wlan reports. I check for the disconnect reason and if drivers are crashing. You can use the CMD prompt command:
netsh wlan show wlanreport duration="7
This generates a wlan report from the last 7 days. Maybe it will give you some good info from client side.

Thank you for that command - I will check that today at some not working clients.

Just a qiuck update: I couldn't see any entry in the "debug mgmt-frames" list standing next to one AP.

Also the "netstat" command on the client doesn't show anything that shows an error.

 

I have now opened a case. I will let you know if we find anything.

We are still unable to resolve this issue even with Aruba Support. We couldn't reproduce the error with a new SSID only deployed on one AP. But if we have that SSID on several APs I could see that the clients don't connect to the nearest AP but on some AP far away what seems to cause the issue. That would explain the problem with our regular SSIDs which are of course on all APs.

If I than disable this SSID on the far away APs the client connects correctly to the AP only a few meters away.

 

Does anyone have an idea what the issue could be or how to troubleshoot that? 

If a user connects to an access point too far away generally that the transmit power of the access point could be too high.  Have you tried lowering the ARM max transmit power on those access points?

 

 

The fact that you have 140 clients on an access point means that access point is too attractive to clients.

Hi,

 

the transmit power in 2.4GHz is 17 on all APs and 5GHz ist 23-27 on all APs except one (only 14). 

In the ARM config it is set from 15 to MAX and the radio profile is (15-21 on 2.4GHZ) and (21-27 on 5GHz). 

 

Also the clients are distributed on all APs as you can see on the screen. 

Ok. 

 

You have two problems that could be contributing to your issue:

 

1. Your maximum transmit power is too high

2.  You should be running either 20 or 40mhz channels, NOT 80mhz(E) channels.

 

If the maximum AP power is greater than the client transmit power, that will make the client hold on much longer.  80mhz channels will make a client hold on longer, as well.

 

I would try my ARM maximum transmit power at 18 for 5ghz and uncheck 80 mhz channels.

 

Hi,

I understand the points but the same setup worked for years with the older AP models. That makes no sense in my opinion. The AP placement isn't very dense so the initial connection should always work because the nearest AP has significantly better signal than the other ones..

If it  would fail or stick at the wrong AP while roaming I could understand that but not in this case.

 

In the next days we will have our local reseller/supporter here because they also measured the AP placement and have quite some experience with Aruba and Wi-Fi in general.

gramallama,

 

I am only making suggestions based on the limited information you have submitted here.  The issue could be entirely different, but those two factors are the ones that stand out.

 

Different APs models can have different patterns, so a 1:1 replacement does not always work 100%.  I only mentioned those two things, because they are easy to try.

Sure we are thankful for all suggestions. That shouldn't sound negative. We will definately try that once we have some "experts" here. 

 

I will report once we find anything new...