Wireless Access

Hi everybody.

I´d like to ask you for your experience with the auto-management of channels in the controller. One of our customer has an Aruba deployment with a high density of APs. We´re having some problems with disconnections with voice equipments  and we are wonder if interferences can be the root of them.

Question is, how "nice" works the auto management of the channel in APs by the controller. Few days ago we make some test. We set our VAP to only works in channel 1, 6 and 11. After reset all our APs we check they only select channel 1 and 6. the only APs that chose channel 11 was thouse wich were in an isolate area where their signal was not interfearing the rest of the warehouse. The rest of the APs, thouse installed in the conflic area, 10 in totall just take channel 1 or 6, not 11.

Is this management  from the controller right?. I expect them to shift to all over the availables channel triyng to suit the most non-interferaring way.

We checked that  there are lot of parameters in the controller to change the behaviour about that. Any important setting  I could take care of to make more aggressive the change from one channel to the other when they detect neighbour AP in the same channel.

as allways, thanks for your replies and you knowledge.

best regards,

Juan.

P.D: (Controller 620 in local mode. AP. 92. With the latest version of sowftware)

If they are not using channel 11, it is probably due to interference. I would convert one of those AP-92 into a spectrum analyzer and see what it finds.

Hi all,

thanks for your reply Zjennings. Indeed, I did it by without suscessfull. It seems it wasn´t interference in channel 11.

Coming back to my original question, is there any setting you can change to make the channel selection "more aggressive"?.

thanks again

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@Juan Lara wrote:

Hi all,

 

thanks for your reply Zjennings. Indeed, I did it by without suscessfull. It seems it wasn´t interference in channel 11.

Coming back to my original question, is there any setting you can change to make the channel selection "more aggressive"?.

 

thanks again

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Juan,

Let's take a step back.  You are trying to do voice (the most sensitive application) in a warehouse (possibly one of the most rf-unfriendly environments).  There are many more considerations besides what channel the access points are on in this environment:

- Was this environment designed for voice, or handhelds?

- A warehouse design calls for access points that are very far apart, because their RF propagates well in open space.  This is almost completely against a voice design that calls for density for smooth roaming.  If you have a decent amount of density in a warehouse, all the access points can see each other and that could cause contention.

- Many warehouses have tons of non-802.11 interference.  They also propagate rf differently based on whether the material is cardboard, frozen goods, or metal.  In addition, how high the stacks are can certainly play a role in what is going on.

My advice is that you at minimum open a TAC case or get someone onsite to evaluate the status of that environment so that it can be determined if it is capable of running your voice application in its current state.  There are too many variables to go through on this forum and it could be very painful to troubleshoot.

Morning everybody.

Thanks for your reply CJoseph.

I really didn´t want to open a troubleshot. I know my problem is very generic and as you said, it would be a painful to try to follow to its root. I just wonder about some setting  in the controller which allow me to tune a little more the change between channels in an enviroment which could be interference. I know there are lot of settings in the controller which can be changed but we are starting to work with Aruba and I don´t want to start changing values without any experience about it.

We are a company used to work in this kind of deployment. Indeed, it´s one of our core busynes. We know how to work in  warehouse with voice technology working . We are cared about  how sensitive can be this equipment and all differents issues that can affect the radio signals (Bluetooth, Wireless Videocams, Alarmas, Fridge engines, etc).

By the way, thanks for your comments and your knowledge. I really appreciate it.

Juan Lara, there is a document in the thread here:  http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Access-Points/manual-power-and-channel/m-p/9438/highlight/true#M1203 that talks in detail about understanding how channels are chosen.

I'm also curious as to how well the auto channel selection works.  I have a site with customers that are complaining about being dropped intermitently.  This behavior only started after a new tenant moved into the adjacent space.

Event logs on the controller indicate there is an interferring AP on channel 6  [An AP/AM 00:24:6c:c7:e5:cd, radio 1 at Location 00:24:6c:c7:e5:cd and channel 6, detected an interfering access point (BSSID fa:ba:74:56:5d:4a, SSID HPC310a.5DBFB1)]

The site has 2 APs - the other AP is using channel 11.  How can I get this AP to stop using channel 6 and use channel 1 or some other unused channel?

Also occurs to me that I may have a few other sites with this issue.  I was under the impression that the default AP profiles would auto channel select?  That was one of the driving points to moving to Aruba, as I previously had to manually manage 350+ Cisco APs.  Of course with Cisco I was much more comfortable with making setting changes on an individual AP (read:  I'm still not fully comfortable with the master controller concept).

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@COLE1 wrote:

I'm also curious as to how well the auto channel selection works.  I have a site with customers that are complaining about being dropped intermitently.  This behavior only started after a new tenant moved into the adjacent space.

 

Event logs on the controller indicate there is an interferring AP on channel 6  [An AP/AM 00:24:6c:c7:e5:cd, radio 1 at Location 00:24:6c:c7:e5:cd and channel 6, detected an interfering access point (BSSID fa:ba:74:56:5d:4a, SSID HPC310a.5DBFB1)]

 

The site has 2 APs - the other AP is using channel 11.  How can I get this AP to stop using channel 6 and use channel 1 or some other unused channel?

 

Also occurs to me that I may have a few other sites with this issue.  I was under the impression that the default AP profiles would auto channel select?  That was one of the driving points to moving to Aruba, as I previously had to manually manage 350+ Cisco APs.  Of course with Cisco I was much more comfortable with making setting changes on an individual AP (read:  I'm still not fully comfortable with the master controller concept).

 

 

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COLE1, 

You need to open a case so that your specific situation can be troubleshot.  It would be time consuming to diagnose and troubleshoot your information this forum due to the amount of information that we would request.  A TAC case would yield better results.