So I am a network tech at a local school district, called to troubleshoot an connectivity issues on a AP.
Topology looks like this
SW (non POE)------POE delivery device (injector)----257 foot cable run to the AP
What was happening was I could ping the AP, but I could not telnet to it. I would get a blank screen with flashing cursor (I could not telnet through VPN or the locally attached switch). Another very odd item is that I could reach the web gui through VPN, no issues. Also user traffic was not getting out. It wasnt a VLAN issue/ACL/etc...because when the AP was hooked up directly to POE device via a 3 ft patch cable (by passing the 257 foot cable) everything worked great. But....that AP was not in its respective location. Many hours of troubleshooting later (after investigating the AP config, mounting a new one, checking out the sw config, etc).....I came to the conclusion maybe bad injector was inhibiting some signals, put new one in, same symptoms. Which were when connected to three foot patch cable to injector worked great, when mounted in right location (thereby using 257 ft cable run), we had same issues. Tested cable with link runner, showed no errors. Pings to device through VPN showed no dropped packets.
I could only get the AP to pass user traffic when I took the injector out of the picture. I mounted the AP, provided local power, bingo, 5 hours of troubleshooting later, we had sustained connectivity. I could telnet to the device and now MACs were being seen on the AP as authenticating and getting out. I found it very odd that there was enough power on the line for the pings to get through, but nothing else....any ideas as to why? Why would ICMP packets work no problem, WEB gui worked no rpblem, but telnet would not. The only conclusion I can see is that telnet keeps the connection open, but the web gui / pings do not (I could be totally worng here). Any ideas?
Thank you for your input,
Jimmy
