Wireless Access

Hi!

We have recently purchased an IAP-325 as the first in our office's wireless LAN renewal. Everything is working great with 802.11ac, except that

in or close to a corner of our office (conference room), connection speed occasionally goes down to kbps-level (at 5GHz) and even pings start dropping (10-20%)

The slowdown happens at the same place with the AP being in the same room and with the AP being on the other side of the office, some 20-30m away. In both cases, at the other end the connection is fine.

When this happens, the PC does not recover itself, but connecting to another SSID (our current WiFi) and switching back, usually solves the problem. But after some time, it happens again. It seems to be very reproducible when laptop to sleep mode and waking up (but seemingly only in that area and not elsewhere).

This is happening with 2017 laptops from Panasonic and Lenovo, both running the Intel Dual Band Wireless 8265 chipset (driver 19.50.1.5 on the Lenovo) . Don't have any other 802.11ac laptops around, but have not been able to reproduce it (yet) on an iPhone.

We used to have the AP of our current Wireless-LAN in that conference room, but the problem prevails after moving it to the area where we don't have any problems. So having both APs there, or one somewhere else, or both together somewhere else, gives the same symptoms at the same place. No other emitting electronics there as far as we are aware.

Any hints to diagnosing this will be appreciated. Honestly, we are out of options to narrow this down.

Best regards

Please see if you could have any of the problems here:  http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Technology-Blog/Removing-the-Bottleneck-in-Wireless/ba-p/77978

Dear Colin,

thanks for the tips.

We had switched off 5GHz for a few days to make sure its only there and not also in 2.4GHz.

Since switching back, have not been able to reproduce the issue yet. Changes to before are

- new driver version (17.91.1.1, though nothing related in the changes)

- switched off 80MHz channels

Will try to narrow it down, to see which effected the solution, or get it to reproduce.

Best regards 

Dear Colin

Though much less frequently, the problem is still occuring.

What we did (other items were done before)

- disable 80MHz channels

- Set the ARM Min and Max TX power to 12 and 18

Any additional tips are apreciated! Thanks.

Please describe the new problem.  Do you have broadcast filtering set to "ARP" in your SSIDs?

the problem is still the same, that connection speed occasionally goes down to kbps-level (at 5GHz) and even pings start dropping (10-20%). I see a lot of retries in the graph for the affected machine.

Broadcast filtering was set to "ARP" up to now. I have now set it to "ALL", and am trying to see if things improve. However, the problem has occured at least once since then, now at a location within the office where the problem was not observed before.

Thanks

Believe it or not, ARP is more effective than ALL in an IAP.  You need to have that setting on all of your SSIDs in your instant cluster.

Is this only happening on a single machine?  In your first post, it says that it only happens in a single location; does it happen to multiple machines in the same location or a single machine?

Thanks for the info on arp filtering. Will revert to ARP.

The problem itself is happening on two models from different vendors (Lenovo, Panasonic) at the same location (only happened ever once at a different location, which could be something different). However, both use the same Intel 8265 Wi-Fi chip.

Also have not yet been able to confirm whether the problem happens at the same moment on both machines or at independent timings. This will be my next test once I can get my hands again on the Panasonic machine.

Have not had an opportunity to test a third model, but the problem is not reproducible on an iPhone even at the moment the Lenovo machine chokes.

So far I have halted the order on additional IAPs until this problem is resolved, since most of our emplopyees will be switching to one of the affected machines in the next months.

Which version of Instant are you running?

Version we are running is 6.5.1.0-4.3.1

Attached is the configuration for reference.

Attachment(s)

backup 20170907.txt   3 KB 1 version

You can try upgrading to 6.5.2.0 here:  http://support.arubanetworks.com/LifetimeWarrantySoftware/tabid/121/DMXModule/661/Default.aspx?EntryId=25165

There is a fix for ARM changing channels to frequently in there.

The rest of your configuration looks okay.

Dear Colin,

since upgrading the firmware on Friday, we havn't been able to reproduce the problem yet. If it stays this way by end of next week, I will declare this solved.

Your initial configuration settings reduced the problem a lot, and this is hopefully the final solution. Thank you for the great support.

Dear Colin,

looks like the upgrade finally solved the problem. Havin two weeks without a hitch now. So I am considering this solved. Would not have been able without you. Thank you very much.

Now up to ordering additional IAPs.