Controllerless Networks

Hi there,

at a customer we build a point to point bridge between 2 buildings using 2 IAP 277. At startup ARM kept changing the channel, dropping the link for a few minutes. To set it fixed, I allowed only 1 chanel (116E) but now I received the complaint that the setup is changing channels again. No changes made according the customer.

What would be the proper way to set the mesh channel fixed? I cannot find any documentation for this.

thanks for letting me know,

Erik 

Channel 116 is typicaly a DFS channel in most regulatory domains.  It is quite possible that your access point it saw radar and by rule it must leave that channel immediately, even if it is the only channel in the regulatory domain.  Try choosing channel 149E if you must use 80mhz channels.  

Quite frankly, you should not really be using 80mhz channels for mesh, because there is too much contention and 80mhz only works well at short distances.  You should use either 20 or 40mhz channels.  

Please see the Outdoor Point to Point Mesh VRD here:  http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Validated-Reference-Design/tkb-p/Aruba-VRDs for more details.

Thanks for the answer Colin. 

I'm in NL so the reg.domain won't let me choose 149E. It's only a span of about 30 meters acros a road.

I just asked the customer to change the channel to 36E in stead and to exclude this channel from the IAP clusters in both buildings. I'll update the post when I receive an answer from the customer.

best regards,

Erik

addon,

I was able to access the GUI of this setup just now and it won't let me select any of the UNII-1, UNII-2 or UNII-3 channels. It only has the UNII-2e channels available to set in the administrator assigned box so I only have CH100-136 at my disposal.

Would this be caused by the regulatory domain NL? These units are bought RW so I probably can't set them to US.

thanks

Erik

Try using 40mhz or 20 mhz channels and see if you have more flexibility in channel selection.  Honestly 80mhz is not useful at more than 10 meters.

Also if the channel keeps changing, see why by going in the Log under AP ARM History to see why.

I checked the 20mhz and 40mhz channels. I only have channels 100-136 available but we found the culprit.

Issue was caused by one of the indoor clusters that suppost to have the PtP channel excluded from ARM but didn't. As soon as the customer removed the channel of the available channel list, the PtP came up and was stable.

thanks,

Erik