Controllerless Networks

Greetings! I have been working on my new wireless network, and today the teachers came back. When they tried connecting to our network with their Samsung Chromebooks (dual radio), at first all 8 in the room connected fine. Then randomly three of them lost connection. The chromebooks started searching for a network. Two eventually reconnected and were fine. The third didn't reconnect at first. Then it came up with the error: "DHCP lookup failed"  (The APs are setup as DHCP servers.)

I took out a couple of more chromebooks to see if the error was specific to that one computer. Out of three other chromebooks that I brought out, one connected instantly, and two continued to seek a connection. (There were no other mentions of DHCP errors.)

When I looked at the connections in the management console, I was surprised to see that only 5 of them had connected to the AP I had placed in the room. The others had connected to APs that were 100 ft away.

I am now very worried that I am going to have issues when my 80 students come back to school and try to connect at once! What can I check to see why the chromebooks are not associating with an AP? HELP! 

Thanks!

Are the wired AND wireless clients on the same VLAN?

Yes. There is a single flat network.

Okay,

You need to enable Broadcast Filtering on that WLAN and set it to ALL.

Wired clients send out traffic at line rate, and they can, because the switch they are connected to allows it.  Wireless clients, on the other hand, back off in the presense of traffic, so they have a hard time getting any traffic passed when on the same subnet as wired clients sending broadcasts at line rate.

Make the change and let us know if it helps.

I changed the broadcast filter, and it continued.

Now, I have to admit to being learning impaired. The last time I had a problem, what did it turn out to be? The switch I hooked the wireless AP to. What did it turn out to be today? A different switch that I had the AP hooked up to!

I am so sorry to have taken up your time, and am very appreciative of your advice! I promise to check the switch first next time I have a problem, before I post here!

I have to believe, however, that your advice has saved me from some other problem down the road!

Again, my sincere thanks!

Hello Cinruskin,

I was hoping to get some more insight on what your actually issue was. We are currently experiencing the same issue with Aruba ap-105 APs and a mixture of Chromeboxes and Chromebooks. We have tried a multitude of changes on our controller but nothing seems to work. We are not experiencing an over saturation problem as the issue continues when only one device is connected to one AP. Was the issue with a PoE or a core switch? Thanks in advance.