Cisco WAP561-A-K9 lose cluster connectivity

[amtacisco]

We have 4 WAP561-A-K9 wireless access points.  They keep losing connectivity to the cluster.  We also have several complaints from user's being unable to connect to the WAP's at all.  They all have 1.1.0.4 as the active firmware.  The only way to get them back into the cluster is to unplug and re-plug the network cable.  We're using POE.  Any input would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

[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.

There are two quick and easy things to check, make sure that Green ethernet is disabled on the WAPs and on the Switch ports if it is available on them. Also please check if Auto Channel is turned on, if so please set Access Points to a static channel. You would need to verify this under the wireless tab and within the Single Point Setup configuration as well.  

If this does not improve your issue, please call our support center and open a case so that one of our engineers can work directly with you.
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/web/tsd-cisco-small-business-support-center-contacts.html

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

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[amtacisco]

Thank you for your response.  I have now disabled Green, and set Radio 1 to channel 5 and radio 2 to channel 44.  I see that only 5 and 44 are being used from the Channel Management on the Single Point Setup page.  I will see how this goes and post an update on Monday when we've had a chance to get a good load on them.  Also, I see there is a new firmware 1.1.2.3.  Should I apply it? If so, does the cluster firmware upgrade work as it should or do I need to do each individually as I've read somewhere before?  Thanks for your help.

[Eric Moyers]

Yes I would apply the update to the firmware and the cluster firmware update does work. I used just last week to update some of the WAP's that I have set up here.

Looking forward to the update on progress.

Thanks

Eric Moyers

[amtacisco]

Hey Eric, the update from the cluster was successful.  Your recommended adjustments along with the upgrade seemed to take care of the problem.  But it seems to be back again.  Mainly with outside visitors trying to use our guest wifi and their connections having limited connectivity.  Even some of my in-house laptops have trouble connecting to one of the SSID's.  So using the other usually works, or removing the wifi from the systems history and reconnecting does the trick.  Anything I can do here to make these things more reliable?

[amtacisco]

Just wanted to post the steps a Cisco tech from support provided to me in an attempt to fix my problem:

"I request you to make the following changes on the wap.First of all downgrade the WAP to 1.1.0.4 and check there is any difference in the connectivity and the browsing speed.

In case of wap at 2.4ghz

Please follow the following steps:

1.Fixed Multicast set to 54

2.Legacy Rates disabled 1, 2, and 5.5

3.Bandwidth Utilization Disabled.

4.Disabled Bonjour

5.Set a static channel per radio

6.Using WPA2 purely

7.Disabled Bandwidth utilization

8.Disabled green power ethernet

9.Disable frameburst support

10.Beacon Interval 200

For 5Ghz

1.Set the channels as 161, another to 154 then 161 and 154

You need to change the channels of the WAP According to the intensity for the WAP that you can check under Single point setup>Wireless Neighborhood

The dark blue colour show ap with more intensity the light the less you have to arrange the wap ‘s in the increasing order of intensity that you can identify by colour  and then assign them static channels as 1>6>11>1 "