Wireless Access

We got reports that wireless service was down.  On the Local Controller we visited Monitoring > CONTROLLER > Access Points.  We selected one of the APs in the problem area and clicked "AP Activity."  All our APs are setup to broadcast three different SSIDs on both radios.  What we found is that only two of the three SSIDs were being broadcast.  At least that's what the Local Controller thinks.  But then we went to where the AP is installed and what we found is that it is broadcasting all three SSIDs.  We stood underneath the AP to maximize our signal, which was about -32 dBm.  When we tried to connect it chose a signal on another AP at about -69 dBm.  We repeated the test several times.  Then we started getting similar calls from all over campus that some locations had lost service.  The problem had spread.  In a seemingly random pattern, multiple Local Controllers had lost state for the same SSID that was being broadcast on some of its APs.  Rebooting the AP will fix it, but of course it also kicks off the people on the other SSIDs, and findiing and rebooting all such problem APs is not efficient.  Also, occasionally we noticed that the Controller would fix things on its own and the state would return.  We opened a TAC call and worked with them for many hours but haven't gotten anywhere.  I thought I would post here in case anyone has seen this before or has any suggestions.

I wish I had  something to say besides "continue to work with tac".  If you feel you are getting nowhere, you can always escalate the case.  Your issue is too complicated and distributed to solve here, but if anyone has seen something like this, they will probably chime in....

Anything else we suggest here would probably consitute a very amateur attempt at troubleshooting without knowing the full issue.

Thanks for the response, makes complete sense.  When we get it figured out, I will post the solution.

Hello doug.fsu,

did you managed to find a solution with TAC? it seems we have a similar problem at one of our customers and a reboot of the particular AP solves the issue for a while, but the issue reoccurs after a while.

Kind regards,

Thomas -

No, TAC was not able to offer any ideas.  The case is still open, we even discussed it with our Aruba Account team at our last two monthly meetings.  We have not had a recurrence since I posted the case description back in mid-May.  Sounds like you have a single AP where this is constantly recurring, which is a little different than what we experienced but similar enough that I am interested in your outcome.  Let's be sure to update one another if either of us figures it out.

Doug

The controllers are in 6.4.2.5 and we decided to upgrade these this week on Thursday, I will keep you posted