1852 ME Nearest Neighbor APs don't show when connected to a certain AP

[ktsaved]

Have a ME network with 11 APs.

When clients are connected to one certain AP on the 2.4 Ghz radio, the APs that are actually the nearest neighbors don't show up in the list of Nearest Neighbors in the Monitoring properties of a client.

The APs showing are the ones that are furthest away at opposite ends of the building with dBm levels of -87 to -89.

If the same client connects to a different closer AP, then the actual neighboring APs do show up. There are 2 to 3 others with signal levels of maybe around -60 to -70 dBm.

Having some trouble with clients going in and out in the area of this AP.

Have tried to Interchange Image, but upon reboot the current image is back showing on the AP.

I am looking at being able to reload the firmware on this AP in case of corruption but can't find a way to do it.

Have reset the AP and it picks up the configuration again from the controller but the problem remains.

Have tried disabling Optimized Roaming and FT, same result.

I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on this, or the specific commands to fully reload the firmware image on this AP to see if that will correct issue, or if this seems to be a radio problem?

[ktsaved]

Forgot to include: Using 8.10.151.0 firmware.

I see this version is recommended and 8.10.183 is available with no open caveats showing - should this version be tried?

[marce1000]

 - Check if there is sufficient cell coverage between the AP's so that clients can see  the nearest neighbors (wireless site survey done ?)

 M.

[ktsaved]

I digged into this deeper and my first analysis was wrong.

This happens on connections to 2.4 Ghz and on other APs also. 5 Ghz works fine and doesn't have this issue.

In checking multiple clients, I have a station located in a central area in the middle of 3 APs.

On 2.4 Ghz, when connected to one of those, the other two don't show in nearest neighbors, only APs that are far away showing lower signal levels than the ones that are closer.

When connecting to 5 Ghz, the true nearest APs show up as the nearest neighbors.

Yes the APs are close enough. Those central clients could connect to any of the three APs and the signals levels are good. These three are spread in an area with the most clients and there is one station basically in the middle of these 3 cells and none of the other of those 3 show in nearest neighbors, just APs far away and sometimes the furthest away, not even any in between the central area and the far edges of the plant.

Other clients closer to another AP out of these 3 cells, should see the other two as weaker signals but they also don't show, just the APs very far away - around -87 to -91 dBm.

These are all 1852e APs and like I said, this issue didn't exist previously. I am not sure when this started but started received complaints about 1 and a half weeks ago, starting with thinking it was an issue with one station behind some equipment, but then turned into stations very close to the first AP I was talking about with clear line of sight to the AP between 10 and 50 feet away losing connection.

This behavior didn't exist previously as I monitored and tuned signal strengths on both bands for the best client connection to the nearest cells for stationary and roaming clients. Nearest neighbors displayed as they should in the ME interface.

I did test with different firmware versions pushing the firmware from the controller to all APs - 8.10.142, 8.10.151 and 8.10.183 and there was no difference. I made enough changes so that the firmware had to be pushed again from the source, not using a copy already on the AP.

I have tested with Optimized roaming on and off, FT enabled and disabled, and tested enabling low data rates. None of this makes any difference.

[Rich R]

So either:
- something changed - but you don't think anything changed on ME/APs so what about software/firmware/drivers on clients?
or
- hardware is failing on the APs - are you sure all those radios are still working correctly?  18x2 APs have a tendency to fail after a few years and it's often the radios that fail.

Regardless of all that you should use 8.10.183.0 to eliminate any known bugs that have been fixed already.

Is this actually causing any problems or just a cosmetic issue with "nearest neighbors".
If nothing is broken - leave it.
If there's an actual problem then describe the problem, run debugs on the client - focus on troubleshooting and isolating the fault rather than looking at what you see with "nearest neighbors".

[Rich R]

> "I monitored and tuned signal strengths on both bands for the best client connection to the nearest cells for stationary and roaming clients."

Remember depending on channel and regulatory domain there may be different power levels allowed for different channels so if the channels changed you might have inadvertently had power levels change too so you might want to check that.