Wireless Access

Hello everyone. I'm glad to have found this community, and I am really hoping someone here can help. Let me just start by stating that I am an entry level IT employee (helpdesk), so please excuse my lack of knowledge on some subjects.

 

The company I work for had us using Magic Jacks, and Avaya IP agent via Citrix, to login to the phones. We began having issues with Avaya not connecting, or dropping, and because we were using Magic Jacks, none of our telecom groups would support the issue. Then, about two weeks ago, they decided to distribute the Aruba Rap3 and an Avaya 9611g desk phone, so we would have a more reliable solution, and one that is supported by IT.

 

I got everything setup, and it worked amazing for about a week, until my ISP changed out my gateway, at my request. Now that I have the new gateway, I will be on a call, and the line will go silent, and then the phone will reset. This happens often, and has made it to where I am going to have to start working back in the office. This is not a great option for me, as I work an off shift, and am a single father of two young children. When I created a ticket for the issue, I was quickly told that, because this happened after my ISP changed my gateway, that I needed to call them. I am all too familiar with working with tier 2 and 3 support at my ISP, and I can tell you, that they have no idea about Aruba RAPs or how they work. 

 

Now, onto the configuration. I have the supplied Ethernet cable running from the  router, to E0 on the back of the RAP, and a 25 Ft. Belkin flat Cat5e cable running from E2, to the top port on the Avaya phone. We use RDP to connect to our office computers, so E1 is not used. Initially, I had a 3801HGV 2-wire gateway, and during this time, I never once had an issue with the phone dropping/resetting. I did; however, have an issue with my bandwidth dropping way below what is was supposed to be, and this is where the new Motorola NVG589, bonded pair gateway comes in.

 

My ISP had already done everything they could do, and I had spent countless hours talking to support and having techs in my house. I had already had a homerun cable ran from the pedestal outside, to the gateway in my house; no wallplates, no splices, straight shot. It took an act of congress to get this bonded pair install, but I finally got it. This is supposed to allow for a more reliable connection, and to be able to pass bandwidth over a further distance, but now I am having the VOIP issues. When I spoke to someone from Voice Architecture, at my company, and tried to explain this to them, they were not trying to hear it, which I partially understand, because there is nothing you can do about someone's personal internet connection. However, I don't find any issues with my connection. Bandwidth is solid, and nothing else on my network seems to be affected. I did finally have someone from IT call me back, and have me reset the RAP, using the reset button on the bottom of the RAP, which appeared fix the issue, but only for about an hour.

 

I really think there is some type of compatibility issue between the new gateway, and the RAP, or Avaya Phone, but I have searched and searched, and cannot find anything regarding this setup. It could be anything for that matter, and that's why I am coming here, hoping that someone in the community can help me out. Please let me know if there is anything additional you may need to consider this issue. I am attaching the documentation for the gateway here. It was pretty hard to find, and not very much information on them is available on the internet. I have logged into the gateway, and attempted to figure out, if something needed to be changed, but couldn't' figure it out. Again, I am new to IT, and the complexities of networking are way over my head, so go easy on me with the networking terms please :smileywink:

 

Thanks to all who take the time to read or reply to this. My job is on the line, if I don't get this straightened out, and being a single parent, I really can't afford to be jobless right now.

 

Thanks,

Chris

Is it just your gateway that's having an issue?  Is there another employee that can test this setup?  The common demoninator is the Motorola router.  Once changed, the problem was introduced.  I would advise you calling our support for more help here.  That would be your best option.  You will need access to mobility controller where the RAP3 terminates its tunnel

Hi Seth.
Thanks for your prompt reply. The gateway does seem to be the factor here, but I had only used the RAP3 for a little over two weeks when the gateway was replaced, so I'm not completely ruling out ruling out other factors just yet. I actually did call Aruba support, but since it is under an enterpise account, and not my name, they were unable to assist. I suspected that would be the case, but I gave I figured it couldn't hurt to try.

 

The problem with getting our internal group to create a ticket, is that we are just starting to role these out, so we have no other reports, that I know of, for the same issue. I work for a large Fortune 500 corporation, but there are just a handfull of associates who have been issued the Aruba devices. The particular gateway that I have, must be some top secret new device, as I was not able to find it on AT&T's website, or even the Arris website (It appears Arris purchased Motorola Home in early this year.). I had to dig for hours to find the documentation on the FCC's website.

 

One more thing to add, is that, during one of these drops, I ran into the other room, where the rap and the gateway are, and the light status on both were good. Perhaps it's an issue with the Avaya phone. I have also logged into the gateway during one of these occurrences, and everything looked good on that end as well. No errors on the lines, no drops in bandwidth, etc..

 

I do have guest access to the Airwave site, but I am not familiar with it, and we have not released any documentation yet. I do have a specific individual, who works in the tier 3 Voice group, and I am pretty sure I could get him on a conference with support, or transfer him in, as long as I made sure he was available ahead of time. I am off the next few days, but will send him an email tomorrow to see if he would be willing to speak with Aruba support with me, or for me. This may not be an issue now, but in resolving this, we could head off a potentially large issue, that could come, as this new gateway is distributed more widely.

 

Thanks again, and if you or anyone else comes up with anything, please do let me know.

 

Regards,
Chris

Chris,

 

When this is happening, is the SSID still up?  Does WLAN ever go away?  If not, this does sound more like a VoIP issue with Avaya.  

 

What is the company you work for?

Hi Seth, and sorry for the late response. I had a few days off, and had to spend them being sick :smileyfrustrated: I would need to speak with HR, before I could release the name of my company, as I am not sure what the policies are, about public forums, and would not want to post the name before I do so. I will speak to my Front Line Lead tomorrow, and will probably need to PM you, or have someone from our IT team contact you. 

 

When this happens, the SSID is still up, and I do not lose connection to RDP, only the phone. However, I believe I may have found the issue, but will not be able to resolve it without purchasing another router, and using "IP passthrough mode" to set it up DNS on it. Shame I just bought a switch, a few days prior, but it is unmanaged, and will not do the job. 

 

If you look at pages 75 and 76, of the attachment I posted, it speaks about IP passthrough mode, but specifically states at the bottom:

 

"Since both the Gateway and the passthrough host will use the same IP address, new sessions that conflict with the existing sessions will be recjected by the Gateway. For example, suppose you are a teleworker using an IPSec tunnel from the Router and from the passthrough host. Both tunnels go to the same remote endpoint, such as the VPN access concentrator at your employer's office. In this case, teh first one to start the IPSec traffic will be allowed; the second one - since, from the WAN, it's indestinguishable - will fail."

 

As I stated previously, I am not a veteran, in the IT field, so I may be way off, but I have spent many hours looking into this problem, and it seems that the router provided by my ISP, has major DNS issues, and the only way to resolve them is by setting up a second router as a DNS server. Before I found this information, I thought I was onto something and contacted, first the manufacturer of the Router, which no longer seesm to be Motorola, and then the ISP, neither one of them had any idea, and could not even provide me with any documentation regarding the modem. The manufacturer did try to help, but seemed suprised when they could not find an info regarding this monstrosity of a router I have. This seems to be not only an issue with this router, but a prior NVG510 as well.

 

Please let me know what you think, in regarding to what I have posted. Once I get a reply, we will go from there. Either way, I will be speaking with my Supervisor, and support team helping with the Aruba rollout, to see if they agree, or have any suggestion regarding this situation. If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any. ;) 

 

Thanks again, and I look forward to your reply.

 

the reason I ask for the company is that I can place you in contact with your local resource from Aruba.  I recommend that you also talk with your IT team.

Having the same issue. AT&T U-verse replaced my 2wire with Motorola NVG589 and my Aruba RAP-2 almost immediately had issues with unstable and loss of connection. I work for CA Technologies, which has 15,000 employees, many of whom work virtual and use the Aruba RAP. Our corp IT team has been working directly with Aruba support and unable thus far to resolve or even pinpoint the issue. AT&T support is useless.

I'm having the same exact issue! I'm so glad I found this. ATT is sending me on a round about, but I'm very positive that it's the modem. I had and one of my colleges took two different RAP devices home and working with no issues on a different model of UVerse modem and cable but on the Motorola NVG 589 it drops after 10-15 minutes. 

Has anyone find a solution yet? ATT is stating that they have no other modem model.

Solved the problem by switching to Brighthouse and now enjoy 90MB download
and 10MB upload, and lower cost too.

- Mark

Hi all,

 

The issue you are having is due to the RAP not seeing a public facing IP. I am sure that the modems that were working, or are now working are single port basic modems.

 

The issues started when you have a multi port modem/router. You need to contact your ISP and have them put your modem in pass-through or bridge mode. This will disable all of the funtions and make it a basic router with a public facing IP.

 

FYI, if you have a router connected to your modem and then the RAP coneected to the modem- use a 10.x.x.x internal network to relieve any intermittent connectivity issues. A 192.168.x.x network will cause connectivity issues. ( I have a TAC case open now to find out why this occurs)