WAP561 - Unresponsive

[Jamie Knight]

Hi,

We have a set of WAP561s, brand new out of the box, which after a few hours of being powered up will become unresponsive. They don't respond to pings and the web interface is unavailable. However they are still broadcasting their SSIDs - and will allow people to connect but can't authenticate them! (We're using RADIUS authentication.)

A WAP321 in the same location works fine. Any suggestions as to why this might be?

Best Regards,

Jamie

[robin.pickering]

Same problem with frequent WAP561 hangs, I did find a thread here where a Cisco rep recommended:

Turn off green Ethernet

Turn off Bonjour

Hardwire 54Mbps multicast rate

I have also seen a thread where the problem was resolved by turning off the captive portal (we don't use this). 

Doing all the above makes no difference to our case.

When the devices hang, the Web UI isn't accessible over Ethernet, the device can't be pinged and doesn't respond to ARP requests from the router. It must however be sending out some frames as it remains in the switch MAC address table on the attached port. All the devices are connected on 802.3af PoE to different switches which are all operating at <<50% of their power budget.

Sometimes they don't hang, but do reboot once a day or so.

Any thoughts on this gratefully received.

[Michiel Beenen]

I have created another thread with the right solution for all this, you dont have to disable green ethernet btw, that will work just fine:

https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/12338441/wap-device-owners-read

[Michiel Beenen · Accepted solution]

Guys,

Try upgrading to the WAP5xx_1.1.0.4 firmware which got released about a week ago.

So far it has helped us a lot.

[Jamie Knight]

Thanks - I'll try the new firmware and see if it helps.

[Jamie Knight]

Thanks Michiel - seems to have done the trick!

[calef0001]

WAP5xx_1.1.0.4 firmware has not helped me. Still has buggy behavior. Not quite the unresponsive behavior I had before upgrading  the firmware, but now after the weekend all my iOS devices can't see the SSIDs. I power cycled the two WAP651s and immediately all the devices were able to connect to the WAP. Buggy stuff for sure.

I recently made the changes found https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/11740101/wap321-hangs and for good measure I turned off Bonjour and set the multicast rate to 54... hoping this helps!

CRAZY that a brand new Cisco device has this major bug! 

[Eric Moyers]

My name Eric Moyers. I am an Engineer in the Small Business Support Center.

I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing this issue. 

From wording of your post, it sounds like it is only Apple products that are having this issue. Is that a fair understanding?

Please call our support center and open a case so that one of our engineers can work directly with you. When you get a case number please re-post it here or send me an email with it. (you can find my email by mousing over my picture)

Once we get you a case number I can work with that engineer to come to a resolution for you. Most of the engineers know who I am and how to contact me.

Eric Moyers
.:|:.:|:. CISCO | Eric Moyers | Cisco Technical Support |
Wireless and Surveillance Subject Matter Expert

Please rate helpful Posts and Let others know when your Question has been answered.

[calef0001]

Eric,

Thanks for the post and sorry for the delayed response. We changed the VLAN settings per the suggestion  https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/11740101/wap321-hangs  and since then I have not had an issue. Since it is working, I am not going to mess with it further.

That said- There is definitely a bug in the firmware. There is no reason 2 brand new WAP should have this buggy crashing behavior. I am confident the bug only comes out when using VLANs on a cluster of WAP561. I am surprised Cisco hasn't figured it out yet. Somebody aught look into it... but since I have already paid my network guy $500 working on this issue, it isn't going to be me messing with it further.

Best regards,

Calef

[calef0001]

I made the VLAN changes found in https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/11740101/wap321-hangs

over two weeks ago and since then I have had no issues. I think that was the fix for me. In retrospect, it would have been easier to take the WAP out of cluster mode.

Clearly the bug has to do with Cluster and VLANs.