Controllerless Networks

We have been seeing issues with users getting dropped from our wireless network.  We are a mixed Windows / Mac envirnoment with both clients seeing this problem.  We recently switched out of a mixed 802.11n and ac environment.  We are now running only 225 access points in AC mode.

 

By going to ac only we have seen performance improvements, but the issue with dropped connections remain a major problem.  I recently spoke to a user who had wireless disconnects 4 times in an hour long training session.

 

All help is appreciated.

#AP225

Is this controller based installation or Instant Cluster ?

Should have stated that. We are on an instant cluster. 28 total access
points in the cluster

--

*Jim McMurchie* | *Smartsheet*
IT Manager
*d* 425-324-2266
jim.mcmurchie@smartsheet.com
Winner : Best 100 Companies to Work For 2014


www.smartsheet.com

I would recommend you do the following :

- Disable 80 Mhz channels under the RF/ARM settings

- Enable broadcast filtering "All" under the SSIDs/Advanced settings

 

See if this helps you.

A couple of other questions:

- What type of authentication are you using ?

- InstantOS version ?

I'm not trying to hijack this thread, but I'm having a similar issue with users being dropped at random times. It also seems that once it happens to one, it happens to at least a few of them on the same cluster, but connected to different AP's. We also have the IAP-225, but we have 61 in our cluster. When I'm looking at the virtual controller, I'm not seeing anything wrong when the users are reporting outages. I will sometimes get alerts that a DHCP request has timed out and occasionally a RADIUS timeout, but that's fairly typical throughout the day and not limited to when users are experiencing issues (and it's typically not reporting an issue for those clients who have contacted me). Over the 61 AP's, we're typically running in the range of 300-350 clients, the vast majority are Windows, but there are more than a handful of phones/tablets. We're broadcasting out 3 networks, our secured network and 2 guests. The clients we get reports from are on the secured network, but then most of them are connected to that network (I'd say 90% of them).

 

I did try the suggestion to turn off 80Mhz channels and Enabling Broadcast Filtering, but it doesn't seem to be helping. I'm willing to post my config if you think it's a setting.

 

Thanks for any assistance!

This is probably not your case, BUT...I had an admin at one point who had installed an Instant cluster on VLAN 99 as the native VLAN, then allowed wireless clients to get DHCP on the same subnet - VLAN 99.  

I would've thought this would not work AT ALL, but it worked long enough for the customer to be convinced he'd configured it correctly.  Two weeks later, all Hades broke loose and half of his clients at any given time were falling off the network.  

This may not pertain to your config (and certainly not if TAC has already looked at it) but may remind someone else to check the obvious!

hey! 

 

upload the configuration and lets check it out :)

 

 

Hey Bryan

 

If you need help with your network, I'm glad to help, just upload the configuration and we'll check the configuration out.

 

/KP-Niklas

I've attached my config. We now believe the users are being dropped because of a wired issue that we are having checked out that's also affecting the AP's.

 

Like the OP, we dropped our minimum transmit power a few weeks ago and, along with the broadcast filtering and disabling 80Mhz channels, it did seem to help. We can't disable 2.4Ghz as we still have some equipment that only have 2.4Ghz radios. We thought that misconfigured rSTP on our wired switches was the culprit Friday, but alas, it has since continued to go down randomly. So maybe it's a mixture of issues.

 

Please let me know if you see something amiss.

 

The only thing I see that is too different is for some reason we enabled
broadcast filtering for ARP only. Not sure if this would have any impact
on you.

If the network dropping is happening frequently, you could drop 2.4 GHz for
a short period to see if the network stabilizes. I understand your issue,
we have 4 devices we have to replace to m ake this work.

--

*Jim McMurchie* | *Smartsheet*
IT Manager
*d* 425-324-2266
jim.mcmurchie@smartsheet.com
Winner : Best 100 Companies to Work For 2014


www.smartsheet.com

Hi,

 

Please change you RF settings:

 

arm
 wide-bands 5ghz
 min-tx-power 6 -SET TO 12
 max-tx-power 127 - SET TO 15
 band-steering-mode prefer-5ghz 
 air-time-fairness-mode fair-access - SET TO Preferred Access
 client-aware
 scanning

 

See the changes in the RF.  

I'll give these changes a shot and let you know how we make out.

 

I do have one question, for the minimum power, I set it low because each of our rooms has an AP, so there's a fair amount of interference, particlularly on the 2.4GHz band where there are limited channels to use. Is there a way to set the TX power of the different radios/bands to different settings? I wouldn't be opposed to turning off an AP's 2.4GHz radios to have a more coverage-over-capacity model on that band, but keep all the AP's 5Ghz radios on as a capacity-over-coverage model.

Hey,

 

Don't mind the 2,4 GHz band. It has to be there do not turn it off, you can however use this command in the ARM; 

band-steering-mode force-5ghz

this will force all the clients with 5 ghz radios up on the high band, and everyone is happy. 

Wanted to update the thread with the changes made (by Aruba, Samya is awesome) that seem to have fixed the problem.

1. Reset the 2.4 Ghz channels to standard 1, 6 and 11

2. Lower power output to 6-12

3. remove 80GHz support

4. Disable 2.4 GHz radios completely.

 

It has been over a week since we put in these configuration changes and we have only one report of anyone being dropped by the network.  Once the dropped connections were sorted, we were able to map two physical areas of poor performance.  In each case we had a poorly performing 225 IAP.  We had sufficient converage to shut down one of the two units, the other we replaced with a spare 115 we had in stock.

 

Jim