Controllerless Networks

I am the new network administrator for a medical facility.  Upon arrival I have been doing systems checks and have found that the Aruba IAP-93 system we have in place has a very old firmware version.  Some of the new wireless devices I have brought in over the last few weeks have had issues dropping connections and roaming from AP to AP (the older legacy devices seem to work much better).

 

I wanted to update from version 6.1.3.1-3.0.0.0_33460 to the available 6.3.1.8-4.0.0.7_44641.  I have backed up the current configuration in case there is some kind of issue during the upgrade, but I wanted to know if there are any known issues with this large firmware jump.  I don't want to sacrifice what works fair for something that doesn't work at all.  I plan on upgrading the network to a newer dual band model but that will have to wait for my new budget to get approved.

 

Thanks for the help!

They say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". The questions is, what is broke?

Is your main problems roaming and dropping connections? What devices do you have these problems with?

Main issues are:

 

1.  Roaming is all over the map.  If a user is on the NE side of the building (4 APs away) they will sometimes roam to an AP in the SE corner of the building.  Very odd.  Lots of retries both in/out.

 

2.  New network adapters like the Intel dual band wireless-ac 7260 have throughput issues.  I can't get much speed out of them, but older legacy cards to 2-4x's as much throughput.  The 7260 has been a known card with problems and I have been diligently updating firmware and connection settings as Intel releases new info.  Throughput isn't any better but they don't seem to drop as much.  They also roam all over the place and often don't connect to the nearest AP.

 

3.  Drops and connectivity problem reports have really been coming in a lot over the last week or so.  I've rebooted the APs to refresh connections but that didn't seem to do any good.  We do have some Noise related issues and some Neighboring AP interference but I'm unsure how best to filter these issues out.

 

Thanks.

1.  What is the power on your access points?  Set your Minimum Transmit power to 12 and your Maximum Transmit power to 18.  http://www.arubanetworks.com/techdocs/Instant_41_WebHelp/InstantWebHelp.htm#UG_files/ARM/Configuring_ARM-Features.htm?Highlight=power

 

2.  Fixing #1 might help with that

 

3.  There might be nothing that you can do to filter out interference, because you have single band access points.  What you can do is set "Broadcast Filtering" to ALL to stop useless downstream broadcasts from affecting your performance:  http://www.arubanetworks.com/techdocs/Instant_41_WebHelp/InstantWebHelp.htm#UG_files/WLAN_SSID_conf/ConfiguringWLANPro.htm

 

 

Thank you so much for the advice.  Currently min/max power is set at 18/MAX and Broadcast Filtering is disabled.  I will make the changes tonight after the facility has emptied and I will report back with the status.

 

Thanks a ton!

As a FYI, the only errors I seem to get on the system is frequent DHCP request timeouts.  I'm not having any trouble with the LAN members of the network (that I can tell) so I'm not sure if this is directly related to communications issues with the WLAN.

I applied this update to the settings on Tuesday night.  We ran them Wednesday without issues, took Christmas Day off Thursday, and upon return to Friday one of my access points was down.  This is the access point that has by far and away the most Noise (usually in the Red on the status meter).  I was unable to access the singular access point directly and I could not reboot it individually (without going down to my PoE switch and pulling the one ethernet cable) so I ended up rebooting the entire network.  After I issued the reboot nothing came up.  I ended up having to go down to the server room and reboot the entire switch in order to get the wireless to come back up again.  Never had this issue before.

 

I left the power settings the same but I disabled Broadcast Filtering just in case.