Security

When our Active Directory users log-in on the 802.1x WiFi network, DFS management pushes down 7 mapped drives. If our Windows 7 machines are on g (2.4Ghz), everything works fine. If the Windows 7 machine uses a (5Ghz), most, if not all of the drives fail to mount.

 

Does this sound like a wireless configuration issue or DFS management application issue?

 

Thanks for your input,

 

Have you tried updating the wireless drivers ?

 

Do this happens in certain locations or anywhere ? Do you use 40 MHz channels ?

I would check the RF environment too

 

show ap arm history ap-name <ap name> and make sure theres not a lot of changes because interference between APs

show ap arm rf-summary ap-name <ap name> And see if there's a lot of retries , lower noise below 85 on that channel

 

If you don't have any applications that need Multicast I would try turning on drop multicast/broadcast on the Virtual AP

Have not attempted to update drivers.

 

It happens at all locations.

40 MHz channels are currently active

 

Traffic and noise looks good according to the Dashboard but have not looked via command line. I will do that.

 

I am not currently dropping multicast/broadcast traffic.

 

The odd thing is that all other web and network services seems to work on the "a" (5Ghz) signal.

 

Can you tell me why 40 MHz channels sometimes causes problems?

It depends on your AP deployment , if you have a dense deployment it's recommended that you use 20 vs 40 channels since ARM wont have as many channels available to assign .

These docs can will help you with that:

http://www.arubanetworks.com/wp-content/uploads/Indoor80211n_2012-05-31.pdf
http://www.arubanetworks.com/wp-content/uploads/802_11nVRDV8_20110913.pdf

Our schools have an AP in the center of every classroom. Some libraries have 2 APs. Would that be considered dense?

 

You have to take in considerations a couple of things :

 

- How big is the room ?

- How close are those APs ?

- What type of wall structure in between rooms ? 

- What's the Maximum/Min EIRP set to ?

- Are the AP wall mounted or ceiling mounted ?

 

But I think you should start by looking at the overall RF health before you move into looking at everything else .

 

When you get a chance run the commands I shared earlier, those could give a good idea .

 

Then if you don't find any issues there try updating the drivers of one of your laptop and see if it improves, you should also consider dropping multicast/broadcast.

 

 

 

 

Got it. Thanks for all your help!!

In reference to "Would that be considered dense?"

 

Our schools are similar so I would say the answer is probably yes.

 

At at least 2 of our larger schools (over 250 APs), we were having problems with channel assignments even using 20mhz channels.  One way we found the issue was a 'clumping' of channels: 2-4 APs adjacent to each other on the same channel.  With the power turned up to normal settings and packed in so tight, the RF was excessive and ARM could not overcome it.  You might look at the interference indexes of some of your APs to see if there is an issue. 

Looking at this from another angle.

Do you have your laptops set to wait for network, before boot?

This is a gpo setting that is off by default. It can slow the boot up process before the ctrl alt del. But it does ensure the laptop had a ip before a user can login.