WAP200E

[justin]

Hi All

I have 3 WAP200e APs in a client site and I am having a problem with the signal between the APs and Motorola 9000 barcode scanners.

The first one went in about 6 months ago and it worked fine. The client then asked for two more to be installed in a couple of rooms adjacent to the room where the first AP was installed. They use barcode scanners with these APs and since the two new ones were installed, the first on is dropping the connection to the scanner. I have turned the new APs off and everything is back to normal. I have reduced the power output of the two new APs and the situation has improved, but they still get problems, especially on Monday morning, where it won't work at all for the first few hours, and then bursts into life and works fine for the rest of the week.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Justin

[jonatrod]

Good morning

Thanks for using our forum

Hi Justin, my name is Johnnatan and I am part of the Small business Support community. When different wireless networks near or products that may cause interference, always configure different channels to avoid overlap of their signals. If the AP is dropped you can try changing these options.

Change channels

Change Security Key Renewal to 36000

The encryption (WPA, WPA2 etc.).

Change the CTS Protection to Auto.

Enable Wireless Connection Control.

Enable Force Lan Port Speed.

I hope you find this answer useful,

*Please mark the question as Answered or rate it so other users can benefit from it"

Greetings,

Johnnatan Rodriguez Miranda.

Cisco network support engineer.

[justin]

Hi Jonathan

Thanks for your reply.

1.     Under the instruction of a Cisco support, I have set up all the APs in the network to use the same channel. This, I am told, is to make roaming work correctly. Is this true or should they all use different channels?

2.     They are not using a Security Key. Instead they use Access Control.

3.     The clients are all 802.11g, so the CTS Protection is not needed. However, I will set it to Auto in case there is an client I don’t know about using the network.

4.     I am unable to find the “Force LAN Port Speed” setting on the WAP200e.

Thanks

Justin

[Clayton Sill]

Hello Jonathan,

When you leave the WAP's in AP mode it is recommended to put them on different channels. The only time you would ever put all your AP's on the same channel if you were using the repeater feature. For actually roaming all you have to do make the SSID and the security the same (if you were using security, which it doesn't sound like you are but ACL's). Keep in mind this is not true roaming but this will be best effort. If you ever want to have true roaming then you would need to look into a wireless LAN controller (WLC).

Yea the "Force Lan Port Speed to 100m" is a feature on the WAP4410n AP's and not the WAP200e, so don't worry about that feature.

So is the scanner being moved around from one location to another or something? I am wondering if it is not completely dropping connection from the first AP it connected to or something. May want to try disconnecting and reconnecting on the scanner "if you haven't already" and see what happens. What do you usually do to get the scanner working again or those it just randomly start working?

I hope this helps!

Thanks,

Clayton Sill

[jonatrod]

Hi Justin

To add to Clayton post, yes, if you are using roaming you have to use the same channel and same SSID in each device.

You have to use different channel when you have different AP and you don´t want that their overlapping between each other, however that is not your case. And you are not going to find the option “Force LAN Port Speed”, it is just for WAP4410N, my mistake :b

I hope you find this answer useful,

*Please mark the question as Answered or rate it so other users can benefit from it"

Greetings,

Johnnatan Rodriguez Miranda.

Cisco network support engineer.

[justin]

Thanks both Jonathan and Clayton.

Now I'm really confused. Do I put all the APs on the same channel or different channels?

Justin

[Eric Moyers]

Hi, My name is Eric Moyers. I am a Network Support Engineer in the Cisco Small Business Support Center. Thank you for using the Cisco Community Post Forums.

As Clayton was mentioning, it is recommended to put each AP on different channels but with the same SSID and same security or as you mentioned with no security and using ACL's.

I would first run a wireless scan of your area to see what signals in there area you are contending with  and if there are others besides the ones you have already mentioned. That will give us a clearer understanding of what you are facing.

If there is nothing else in the area I would place each one on a different channel. I would use 1, 6, and 11. This way the three access point will not trample one each others signals.

As far as roaming is concerned, Small Business does not have true seamless roaming. Without a wireless LAN controller to control when the signal moves from one AP to another, you have to count on the wireless client (in your case the Scanner), to drop the current connection and then look for the strongest signal to connect too. If you can save wireless profile in the scanner like you can a laptop it will make the process a little faster. But the signal still has to drop to move over first.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Eric Moyers    .:|:.:|:.

Cisco Small Business US STAC Advanced Support Engineer

CCNA, CCNA-Wireless

866-606-1866 ext 601027

Mon - Fri 09:00 - 18:00 (UTC - 05:00)

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[justin]

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this dicussion. It seems that Cisco may have to have a look at what it has put in the manual and what it is telling it's support staff what to advise clients.

I'll try it with different channels and the same SSID.

Thanks to all.

Justin