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MacBooks intermittently unable to pass traffic on Wireless.

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  • 1.  MacBooks intermittently unable to pass traffic on Wireless.

    Posted Nov 19, 2019 09:53 AM

    I have a couple issues that has been intermittently recurring since our students returned this fall. This issue only seems to happen with MacBooks.

    In both scenarios the MacBook shows up as connected to an AP (on the controllers/MM and the MacBook itself) yet cannot pass any traffic, even arp or dhcp. I have packet captures from the client side show that it is sending ARPs and DHCP discovers but getting no responses.

     

    Scenario 1: The user opens the MacBook after it has been closed for an extended period and moved to a new location. It takes 30 seconds to 3 minutes for the wireless to start passing traffic. Logs show it connects to an AP immediately then reconnects, usually to the same AP, after some period of time (seconds to minutes). At that point it starts passing traffic as normal. If the user cycles the wireless adapter it starts passing traffic immediately.

     

    Scenario 2: The user has been stationary and usually active (but not always) on their MacBook for some period of time (40 minutes in the last reported case). The suddenly lose their internet connection, the Wifi symbol gets an exclamation point in it and the MacBook says it is searching for Wifi. They are usually close to the AP they are connected to with good signal strength. This scenario will continue until the user moves to a new location or cycles their wifi adapter. Packet capture from the client shows unanswered ARPs and DHCP discovers. Packet capture from the controller for the clients MAC shows no traffic at all to or from the client.

     

    Aruba TAC has been engaged but has no idea what is happening. As I can't reproduce it for them they don't seem to be interested in troubleshooting further. We have tried different power level settings, disabling Airgroup and setting “Force 5Ghz” with no change in the issues.

     



  • 2.  RE: MacBooks intermittently unable to pass traffic on Wireless.

    Posted Nov 25, 2019 07:56 AM

    Do you have multiple controllers and "Enforce DHCP" enabled?



  • 3.  RE: MacBooks intermittently unable to pass traffic on Wireless.

    Posted Nov 25, 2019 08:39 AM

    4 controllers in a cluster

    Enforce DHCP was enabled but I disabled it a few days ago. I have seen the wake up issue since so that isn't resolved. Students are on break this week so it will be a while before I can see if the change made a diffrence for the random loss of network.



  • 4.  RE: MacBooks intermittently unable to pass traffic on Wireless.

    Posted Dec 03, 2019 08:16 PM
    What Aruba OS are you running?


  • 5.  RE: MacBooks intermittently unable to pass traffic on Wireless.

    Posted Dec 03, 2019 08:33 PM
    The reason I ask is because the last version of 6.x that was available before moving to 8 was bad for us with MacBooks. We had some random clients dropping at random times and the only way to get it back was to power cycle the adapter.

    In some cases updating the OS of the MacBook fixed it and other times it broke it.
    .
    Since switching to OS 8 I have not seen that issue again.


  • 6.  RE: MacBooks intermittently unable to pass traffic on Wireless.

    Posted Dec 04, 2019 07:29 AM
    At the time of posting we were running 8.3.0.4. We upgraded to 8.3.0.10
    last week for other reasons.
    I am waiting to see if the upgrade had any impact on the MacBook issue.
    Jon


  • 7.  RE: MacBooks intermittently unable to pass traffic on Wireless.

    Posted Dec 04, 2019 07:39 AM
    Gotcha,

    Well then it's probably not that same issue I was having. I'm running
    8.5.0.3 at this point without those issues. I would check the OS's on the
    MacBooks too as that became a factor for me in 6.X

    --

    Chad Morris
    Alliance City Schools
    Technology Supervisor
    200 Glamorgan St.
    Alliance, OH 44601

    Phone: 330 821 2100 x 1213


  • 8.  RE: MacBooks intermittently unable to pass traffic on Wireless.
    Best Answer

    Posted Dec 20, 2019 02:50 PM

    At this time it appears that upgrading to 8.3.0.10 has resolved the issue. It has been 3 weeks since we upgraded and all complaints have stopped.