AP541N - Degrading Service

[lucas4]

We have an AP541N that has been deployed to replace a Cisco 1200 AP (B/G radio).  The 1200 functioned perfectly in our environment.  The new AP541N on the other hand seems to work fine right after a reboot but immediately starts to degrade service.  Over a short period of time, the devices bandwidth degrades to the point were the wireless network is not usable.  This happens with just one device connected.  Eventually, the device stops accepting client connections.  We are unable to get any relevant logging out of the device to help diagnose the problem.

What should be our course of action?

Lucas Budman

Cognilytics

[John Gawf]

I have access to the beta 1.9.  The support engineer said to load it and take tho AP back to factory default and re-configure.  I'm managing these two boxes remotely and that isn't an easy proposition.  Does the AP need to be returned to factory defaults after 1.9 is loaded?

[Christopher Pruitt]

So far it has worked for us.. upgraded to 1.9 and reset to factory settings and reconfigured.. I'll update tomorrow when I find out a little more on this.

[Steven DiStefano]

If upgrading from v1.8.0 the upgrade process will probably go smoothly without the need for a factory default.  If  upgrading from v1.7.2 that's another story as the default AP parameters changed between this version and v1.8.0 so in this scenario that will definitely require a factory default.

Steve

[John Gawf]

Steve,

Thanks for the information.  There were no notifications I could find about resetting to  factory defaults when going from 1.7 to 1.8.

The Small Business Support Center engineer said that "Per our policy and past experience, it is highly recommended to reset the device to factory defaults after a firmware upgrade.  If you do not reset the AP(s) and they develop problems or become unstable, you will be asked to reset them to factory defaults as the next troubleshooting step."

This is a non starter for me as it really impeeds me from selling these units if the product development team has this "policy".

Please pass along to the product development team that this can't continue for all upgrades.  Even though this product is GPL development from the Linksys group, they can't play fast and loose with the product when it is in sitting in a Small Business.  I can't charge a small business customer my service time to factory reset their products when upgrading software to fix a bug in their small business systems including these APs.

[Steven DiStefano]

I actually got the advice I posted to you from our business unit Product manager.

I am sorry for this, and I understand what your saying. I will pass it along...

Steve

[Steven DiStefano]

The latest firmware for the Cisco Small Business Pro Wireless Access Point (AP541N) is now online.  The firmware new firmware version is 1.9.0.

Here is the link to the release notes: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/wireless/access_point/csbap/AP541N/release_notes/78-19182.pdf

[opresterud]

I can confirm 1.9 solves our problem with speed degrading. We first tested it during a football match the 14th of April, but sadly that day the ISP failed to deliver us a proper service, so we couldn't get a result we could trust. But it seemed at that point that the WLAN acted fine. Today we had a new test with ~30 journalists doing different kind of media work, and it worked perfectly! No speed degrading or other issues, we did also try to stresst the net with several large up/download tests. We are using 4 AP541Ns in a cluster system, where two of them have a WDS bridge between them.

Thanks a lot for fixing this issue!

[mreusch-uic]

We recently upgraded our cluster of 3 AP's running 5Ghz N only to 1.9(0), and also reset to factory defaults and reconfigured, and are still experiencing degradation issues.  I also disabled (set to 0) the rekeying, also noted from an earlier post in this thread.  It also looks like there's a bug with the Sessions info on Cluster management, as they show a steady decline after only a few minutes from 130Mbps+ sessions down to 1-6Mbps, but checking the laptops wireless they still show 130Mbps+.  Any further feedback on others that the 1.9(0) firmware fixes this issue or other things to try. We're to the point of returning these AP's as we're only trying to support 6 users and patience is wearing thin.  Thanks.

[ActiveInfoTech]

I have upgraded one AP to 1.9 firmware and the unit is still unstable.   I can set in front of the computer and watch the signal go from 1 Meg to 5.5 Meg to 54 Meg and back to 1 Meg in matter of seconds.  I have 7 users on the AP and all of them are seeing the same thing.   I have a Linksys Wireless Router 5 feet from it and have stronger and more stable connections to it.   One user is 20 feet from the AP and is see very poor signal and connection.  I even have one user that can connect to the Linksys Wireless Router but can not even see the Cisco AP.  If I can not get this fixed today I will have to return it.

[jwalker]

I had only a few client connected for a week or so after upgrading to 1.9 and everything seemed to be working great.

We are now having issues again with anything connecting using wireless G.  The device attempts to connect and then fails to obtain an IP address.  The wireless N clients are able to connect and disconnect freely while the G clients are having this issue.  Most of the G clients are phones and ipod touch devices.

After a quick reboot, everything is able to connect and things run smoothly for a day or so.

Any ideas where to start troubleshooting?  This AP has a ton of features for a great price, but I've bearly been able to use it since I bought it months ago.

[Christopher Adlam]

We've had an AP541N running at our office for about a week now. I upgraded it to 1.9.1 right out of the box. It has been solid.... Then on Monday, it refused to communicate with the associated wireless devices. It was like all the wireless connections were "dropped", but they clients still thought they were associated with the AP. A quick disable/enable of the wireless on my notebook put me back on-line, where I logged into the AP and it had not restarted and still showed everything to be normal. Every device that had been associated needed to be disassociated/associated in order to gain full connectivity again.

I then, after reading some of the suggestions on here, turned the key refresh to 0. It has been fine the rest of the week so far..... With no reoccurence of what happened.

Just a very puzzling incident.

[fluffymassive]

Hi All,

my company also has a AP541N-N-K9 Wireless AP. WE have had reports from our customer that the wireless is cutting out also exactly like what is reported in this thread.

WE have changed the timeout to zero and the SSID currently still has spaces in it.

Did the upgrade to the new firmware resolve the connection issues.

From our log there were lots of :

     - wlan0 deauthed from BSSID x:x:x:x:x:x reason 4

     - wlan0 deauthed from BSSID x:x:x:x:x:x reason 1

     - wlan0 disassociated from BSSID x:x:x:x:x:x reason 8

The help menu does not descibe these properly.

It is currently set up for 802.11b/g/n

Channel 1

Channel Bandwidth 20MHz

Short Guard interval supported: Yes

Protection: Auto

Beacon Interval: 100Msec

DTIM Period: 2

Fragmentation Threshold: 2346

RTS Threshold: 2347

Maximum Stations: 200

Transmit: Full

Fixed Multicast Rate:Auto

Does the Upgrade work? Has there been any other workaround?

Cheers,

[Christopher Adlam]

Mark:

Please check out my thread on my trials and tribulations with this unit and what eventually fixed it.

-Chris

[larrietaccna]

Can you solve the problem ??

[doitservices]

Having the same issue (degrading service).

laptops -> 3x AP541n -> SR520 -> switch/fiber

Initially we had 9Mbit down and 5/6 Mbit up, but after a few hours the bandwith dropped to 1.2Mbit.

I managed to get a stable situation by removing 2 AP's and disabling clustering.

It's still not stable! and dropping clients... did they test this device before selling it??

Can anyone confirm that the issues are resolved by the latest firmware?

Geert