Warehouse wireless issues using WLC 5520 2.4ghz \ 11b on 2802e Access Points with MC92N0-G scanners with Anroid OS

[deanwoolley]

Since we migrated our entire infrastructure in our Warehouse environment we have had performance \ connectivity issues

Migrated from local 5508 WLC to offsite 5520

Migrated from 1242 APs to 2802e APs with Omni directional antennas (AIR-ANT2544V4M-R=)

Migrated from Psion Pro 3 scanner to MC92N0-G Android OS

We have had a wireless site survey completed and the layout is now correct but we still have issues.

We have had 3 cisco TAC cases raised and we still have issues.

We moved all to 5ghz range and this performed worse than on 2.4ghz.

We have lowered data rates \ disabled lower data rates etc as per Cisco recommendation and still have issues.

Power levels have also been ammended.

From testing with the Warehouse and monitoring connectivity it would appear to be issues when roaming between APs. Any assistance \ recommendations would be greatly appreciated. If you need any further information let me know. Below is the current data rates configuration as per the last TAC case opened.

[deanwoolley]

Clem58 out of interest how did you get to the conclusion of disabling clean air I figured this was supposed to help performance.

[Clem58]

I totally agree. To be honest I thought after implementing custom power and channels settings, cleanair was not used anymore. In fact cleanair seems to be still activated and trying to do it's job.

I disabled it in fact, to have a more coherent configuration, then we observed every scanners stopped to swap from an AP to another and stay on the nearer one.

In addition, after each configuration (custom settings, cleanair disable) the  3802 APs had to be rebooted, as they seemed buggued or stuck.

[deanwoolley]

Clem58 what manual power settings did you use (auto is currently between 3 and 7 on our APs) and how high up are your access points.

After disabling clean air on 2 APs in the first isle I have had an immediate response of major improvement. I may hold back on adjusting the power levels at this point or would you recommend still going ahead and making these changes also.

[Clem58]

Happy there is an improvement !

I cannot tell you precisely, I'm not on site currently and don't have this info (I'm french and it's 9pm ;)).

But it depends on a wifi coverage survey that will determine which power or channel you will need. I our shopfloor APs are in power 2 but I think we can lower more.

I'll tell you tomorrow.

Good luck !

[Clem58]

For our Shopfloor we have 7x3802E APs, at a high around 15 feet. I've done a coverage Survey, with a power of 2 I think all the shopfloor can be covered by 4 APs only. But as it's critical to change the settings of the APs during the production, I did let power 2 on the 7 APs and roaming is good and interferences are mitigated (at first the APs were on Power 1). Then no need to change anything. But I'm sure it can be more optimized.

If you see a major improvement in disabling cleanair maybe you can begin only with cleanair disabled and let auto for the RRM. Then if you still encounter some roaming problems, I suggest you to set custom values.

[kingbily96]

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@deanwoolley wrote:

Since we migrated our entire infrastructure in our Warehouse environment we have had performance \ connectivity issues

Migrated from local 5508 WLC to offsite 5520

Migrated from 1242 APs to 2802e APs with Omni directional antennas (AIR-ANT2544V4M-R=)

Migrated from Psion Pro 3 scanner to MC92N0-G Android OS

We have had a wireless site survey completed and the layout is now correct but we still have issues.

We have had 3 cisco TAC cases raised and we still have issues.

We moved all to 5ghz range and this performed worse than on 2.4ghz.

We have lowered data rates \ disabled lower data rates etc as per Cisco recommendation and still have issues.

Power levels have also been ammended.

From testing with the Warehouse and monitoring connectivity it would appear to be issues when roaming between APs. Any assistance \ recommendations would be greatly appreciated. If you need any further information let me know. Below is the current data rates configuration as per the last TAC case opened.

---

Greetings all,

Still working on trying to improve our wireless on our campus. I've gone through multiple rounds with VARs and Cisco Wireless Experts and we've made quite a few adjustments for our residence halls in particular but I'm still getting complaints. I think some of this is simply due to interferers... in some areas I'm seeing 80%+ channel utilization with less than 5% tx and rx on the AP and it's neighbors and with a number of unknown interferers in the area with unknown effect and duty cycles. We won't know for sure until this summer when we can go in with a spectrum analyzer and disable our radios for a clean survey of the air space. Since most of our residence hall APs are in a hallway covering rooms on both sides (not great, I know, but this can't be changed anytime soon), they can see each other as neighbors fairly easily.

We don't support 802.11b anymore and that helped, particularly with roaming. A lot of complaints in the residence halls don't really involve a roaming situation though. Our engagements with the experts have indicated the following data rates for 2.4ghz:

Recent attempts to improve the situation have involved reducing the 2.4ghz cell size by modifying the RRM Power Threshold v2 trigger and Maximum Power Level Assignment. I believe, judging by feedback, this had a small positive affect but it wasn't enough yet. We also enabled a 5ghz only SSID but I've already gotten a complaint about that network as well.

My second attempt involved adjusting those settings again, this time to increase 2.4ghz cell size, and disable the 2.4ghz radio on every other AP (staggering between floors). We're in the process of seeing how this one plays out although RRM is still keeping the radios power level down so I started looking in to other possibilities.

I'd like to disable the 11 Mbps data rate... advice we got previously was to leave it on so clients could drop down to it if necessary but I'm wondering if this isn't part of the issue since as I've read this could be causing a larger cell size for AP neighbor detection. I did try to disable it on one RF profile but got an error saying "Failed to update 11b data rate as 802.11b network is operational"... do I need to disable this data rate in Wireless->802.11b/g/n->Network" first?

This is a BYOD environment so I have to support as much as possible, within reason (sorrynotsorry802.11b). When I look up device info in Prime Infrastructure on some of the tickets I've gotten, connectivity/data rates/SNR/etc usually looks pretty good for the most part. Anyone have any similar experiences or thoughts on this?

edit Update to include some additional information... all of our residence halls are utilizing a main SSID broadcasting both 2.4ghz and 5ghz with Band Select enabled (the two residence halls I'm using to test are also broadcasting the second 5ghz only SSID I mentioned above). AP units consist of Cisco 2702i APs and some 702w/1801w deployed where we had to

[patoberli]

Disable 11 Mbps, that's still an 802.11b rate and should be avoided. Yes you need to disable 2.4 GHz temporarily to change this. But it normally doesn't take more than 30 seconds to change, so most users will not notice the "downtime" :)

Forgot to mention, 80% load on the channel means it's barely useable. I suggest here to get rid of the rogue APs if you can, or at least make sure they all run only on channels 1, 6, 11 (if it's your premises, make it a rule) and medium to low signal strength, if they only need the signal in the room. That way the network might get a tiny bit more stable.

I suggest to disable Band Select for testing, because that can cause roaming issues with buggy drivers (very common).

Which software release are you running on the WLC?

[ROBERT T]

Try statically setting your channels and power settings. To do this, you will need to go out there with an analyzer to make sure you set it correctly. If you have multiple floors, you should go to the other floors to see the signal strength of the floor above or below and adjust accordingly. You should use your map of the facility to space out the channels the best you can. Avoid the DFS channels on 5Ghz. 

I have a lot of APs at 30-40ft high in warehouses. I statically set the channels and power. RRM doesn't seem to do as well with the APs so high.

If you are using scan guns, I recommend looking into the roaming threshold, the channels the client scans and the sleep mode. If you can limit the scan guns scanning to only the channels you use, they will roam faster. Some clients wait until their signal is very poor to roam, then it's to late and they drop. If you can, shut off sleep mode or reduce it as much as you can. I understand they want to get more battery life, but it needs to perform well too.

I hope this helps.

[kingbily96]

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@deanwoolley wrote:

Since we migrated our entire infrastructure in our Warehouse environment we have had performance \ connectivity issues

Migrated from local 5508 WLC to offsite 5520

Migrated from 1242 APs to 2802e APs with Omni directional antennas (AIR-ANT2544V4M-R=)

Migrated from Psion Pro 3 scanner to MC92N0-G Android OS

We have had a wireless site survey completed and the layout is now correct but we still have issues.

We have had 3 cisco TAC cases raised and we still have issues.

We moved all to 5ghz range and this performed worse than on 2.4ghz.

We have lowered data rates \ disabled lower data rates etc as per Cisco recommendation and still have issues.

Power levels have also been ammended.

 https://ovo.fyi/redtube/ https://ovo.fyi/beeg/ https://ovo.fyi/spankbang/

From testing with the Warehouse and monitoring connectivity it would appear to be issues when roaming between APs. Any assistance \ recommendations would be greatly appreciated. If you need any further information let me know. Below is the current data rates configuration as per the last TAC case opened.

---

Greetings all,

Still working on trying to improve our wireless on our campus. I've gone through multiple rounds with VARs and Cisco Wireless Experts and we've made quite a few adjustments for our residence halls in particular but I'm still getting complaints. I think some of this is simply due to interferers... in some areas I'm seeing 80%+ channel utilization with less than 5% tx and rx on the AP and it's neighbors and with a number of unknown interferers in the area with unknown effect and duty cycles. We won't know for sure until this summer when we can go in with a spectrum analyzer and disable our radios for a clean survey of the air space. Since most of our residence hall APs are in a hallway covering rooms on both sides (not great, I know, but this can't be changed anytime soon), they can see each other as neighbors fairly easily.

We don't support 802.11b anymore and that helped, particularly with roaming. A lot of complaints in the residence halls don't really involve a roaming situation though. Our engagements with the experts have indicated the following data rates for 2.4ghz:

Recent attempts to improve the situation have involved reducing the 2.4ghz cell size by modifying the RRM Power Threshold v2 trigger and Maximum Power Level Assignment. I believe, judging by feedback, this had a small positive affect but it wasn't enough yet. We also enabled a 5ghz only SSID but I've already gotten a complaint about that network as well.

My second attempt involved adjusting those settings again, this time to increase 2.4ghz cell size, and disable the 2.4ghz radio on every other AP (staggering between floors). We're in the process of seeing how this one plays out although RRM is still keeping the radios power level down so I started looking in to other possibilities.

[Clem58]

Hello,

Advices I could give you:

- Make a Spectrum survey to locate some interferences sources, for example in one of our warehouses, we had a main source of interferences that was a simple motion detector ! After removing this device, no more interference occur.

- Use 802.11G only, not B, with data-rates not below 12mbits, because the coverage will be too wide and will cause interferences. You can found a really interesting article here http://wifinigel.blogspot.com/2015/03/what-are-sticky-clients.html about data-rates and Wireless coverage.

- If possible, test using 2 differents SSID for 5GHZ and 2.4GHZ, I think it could releasing the SSID utilisation, and RRM+cleanair is also checking this. For example with clients balancing or channels real-time utilisation.

-Try to use only 1, 6, 11 channels, as they are non overlapping channels, but you have to be aware that event these are non overlapping that doesn't mean two same channels cannot overlap themselves.

- Change the DCA settings, from 10min to 8 hours, then the channels won't be changed too much times and cause some disconnections

[kingbily96]

ure right man 

[Mikey Boy]

Hi, out of interest what are the RX-SOP values in use currently on site? I have seen instances where people have migrated to a newer WLC platform and have got caught out with the RX-SOP thresholds being set slightly higher for the default RF Profiles that they have chosen to use.

If you issue "show 802.11b extended" and " show 802.11a extended" what is the output?

In a warehouse I would want to see the values set to "0"

Regards