Wireless Access

I was wondering if there was anything I could be doing about high packet loss (15%) and my clients dropping off the network.

 

I've got a Aruba200 controller and 4 access points. Even when sitting 10-15 feet away from an access point I'm still getting packet loss.

 

I've got 175 interfering AP's detected in the last hour, not sure how I should take that number.

 

I'm running 5.0.3.3 (Most recent version supported by Aruba200) and I just reset my aruba to factory settings to rule out anything caused by incorrect configuration settings.

 

Thanks in advance,

Steven

Do your wired clients share a layer 2 subnet with your wireless clients? In that case, you need to drop broadcastcand multicast in your virtual ap profile.

No matter how many interfering clients and aps you can see, unless they are directly between your ap and client, you should not worry much. Not supressing wired broadcasts is a greater threat to your clients.

I've got the access points tunneling back to the controller on the same subnet as my wired clients. From there I have the wireless lans going out my "wan" interface on the controller into a trunked port on my firewall. Wireless clients are on their own subnet.

I highly recommend you open a support case with TAC. Dropped clients could be caused by any number of factors. There is no easy way to diagnose this.

 

If there is a specific client being dropped, TAC will want you to put that user's MAC address in debug mode.

 

Here's how:

 

Basic Client Troubleshooting
1. Put your device in debug logging on the controller: conf t, logging level debugging user-debug your-device-mac

2. Simulate the failure

3. Now look at the logs: show log user-debug all | include your-mac-address

@stevendtorres:

 

How many wireless LANs do you have?

Does this problem occur with a single client or all clients?

What encryption are those clients using?

What model APs do you have deployed?

What client type (OS, network card) is being used?

When you say 15% network drops are you saying ping traffic that is dropping?

Thanks for the ideas guys. I have two wireless networks, one for internal use and one for guests.

 

I'm measuring packet loss with pings. I've got all sorts of clients, macs, pcs, and phones. Getting complaints from mostly everyone, haven't been able to establish a pattern. Encryption is wpa2 / aes.

 

I think I'm going to relocate the access points away from my heating/cooling ducts and then open a TAC request.

Stevendtorres,

 

Start with making sure that "drop broadcast and multicast" is enabled in the Virtual AP profile of both wireless networks.  Some users only enable "drop" on one, but the other network degrades wireless.  Congestion from brodcasts affects users universally no matter what access points they connect to.  Interference, is localized and will mostly occur in an area.

 

Please drop broadcast and multicast on BOTH wlans and measure again.

 

I too have a similar problem. Do you know if that debug command is likely to be service affecting?

To some extent, it is, so do not leave it enabled past when you need it.