Wireless Access

Hi,

Are there any debugs in aruba 6.5 code that we can run against a particular client to find its health(data rates, SNR, Health %.....) over a period of time.
If not debugs, will there be any way out to capture the associated client status/condition over a period of time?

Thanks

There is debugging, but it is not very specific.  What is your problem and we can suggest some things to look at?

I have few legacy client devices in my network. Would want to check there status over a course of time.
Dashboard (Dashboard --> Clients) show better illustration for a particular client for that instant in time.

However I am looking for something which gives me an insight about the client status for a longer period say 1 hour or so a get a better insight from Controller's standpoint what a particular client is going through(associations, handoffs, disassociations....) over a longer period.

The controller is flash-based (no hard drive) so it only contains about 10 minutes of information; mostly realtime information.  Each client has a Health Status on the dashboard that you can look at to see what is happening that moment.  You can turn on debugging for a client and send that information to syslog to track association/disassociations long-term, if you would like.

Alternatively, there is Airwave, which is designed to provide long-term trend information about Aruba Products:  http://www.arubanetworks.com/products/networking/management/airwave/

Thanks for prompt responses Joseph.

What are the informative client specific debugs that I could run over the controller to get my needful done?

You can turn on client debugging, but the logs are very low-level, so it is important to know what you are looking for.  

Are you having problems or are you looking for a problem?

I am having the problem that the specific legacy handheld devices are experiencing frequent disconnections.

Having atleast the debugs reflecting info with time stamps against:

the AP for association for the particular client under observation,

The RSSI values during the course of association, the client in motion associating to other APs and the dissociations encountered is the info that I am looking for.
In Cisco, there are many client specific debugs that would be handy enough for troubleshooting various client association issues. Looking for the similar ones in Aruba, if you know of some.

You can go to Monitoring> Controller> Clients, select the client and click on the debug button.  The log does not log RSSI or changes in RSSI, because it can happen frequently.

If you click on Dashboard> Clients> <that client>, it will give you and idea of the client's current health.

Let's start from scratch:

- What kind of clients are these?

- What kind of wireless environment is this?

Thanks Joseph.

Dashboard> Clients> <that client> still gives some good insight like: SNR, Speed, Goodput, Dropped frames to client & Retries frames to client. Wondering if there is a way out to enabling saving of these charts for particular clients over a period of time. I was looking for something that gives me better insight of the roaming of the clients in motion(at what signal strength client is attempting association to an AP with comparatively better RSSI, no of diss-association encountered over a period of time...).

Now coming to your queries, please find inline as the responses:

- What kind of clients are these?

Response: These are basically the hand held wireless VMT devices that operate on 2.4ghz radio and with poor reciever sensitivities.

- What kind of wireless environment is this?

Response: Its basically an outdoor environment comprising of Aruba 277 and 274 APs.

You would have to employ something like Airwave to trend the information that you see there, because the controller retains limited information.

Roaming outdoors is a particularly difficult task to design for and troubleshoot.  How far apart are the 277s?  Is there any way you can go to the manufacturer's page on those devices and get any information on their radios?  Have you tried to do roaming indoors?  What is the application being delivered on those devices?  From the controller side, it would be almost impossible to determine at what signal strength clients roam because clients do not report it and it is possible they use a combination of signal strength and errors to determine when to roam.  If it is possible to contact the manufacturer, it might give you a leg up on what you are trying t accomplish...