I have a customer which is a Small RV Park that has Four 1242 Dual Band Access Points with external outdoor antennae. All 4 APs are configured with a client SSID on the 802.11G radio, and an Infrastructure SSID on the 802.11A radio interface. The A band is being used for wireless backhaul from the 3 remote APs to a central AP configured as a Root Bridge. The 3 remote APs are non-root bridges on the A Radio interface.
There are separate antenna on each AP for the 2.4ghz and the 5ghz bands. Directional patch antennae are on the remote APs on the A band pointing to an 5ghz Omni on the Root Bridge. On the 2.4ghz band that the client PCs use, their are either Omni or 180 degree patch antenna on those interfaces.
The issue I am having is keeping all three 802.11A back haul links up at the same time for an extended period. I moved some of the 1242 APs in the park to get better client coverage, and all three remote radios worked with the backhaul link working at 54mbps. Then I started having issues with one radio dropping its backhaul link, while the other two remotes worked perfectly. Then a second AP backhaul link failed. I was then able to reconnect the radio I was initially having issues with changing the root bridge channel selection from manual to DFS.
The Second remote AP still has not reconnected, but remote APs 1 an 3 are still up. I have checked the antenna alignment visually, and checked the connectors. Even swapped out a spare AP. All 1242s are running the last software version put out for that model.
Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this? When I do a shut/no shut on the dot11radio1 interface, I get a console message that it finds no radio to associate. The Infrastructure SSID has no security on it and open authentication. This is just for free internet access to anyone in the RV Park.
