We have a rather large deployment of AP1200's (802.11b radios) in a hospital environment and they've been working fine. But recently I happened across some AP's that for whatever reason even though they have been set to use a particular channel (1,6, or 11) I am finding that some are actually using a different channel (5 or 7 or 2). I understand if they were using the Select Least Congested Frequency option how I might wind up with those frequencies but I am just trying to understand what other factors might be causing their communication frequencies to change without any interaction from us.
I'm not sure if they AP Role has any part in this - most of the AP's have the role of Root Access Point (fallback to repeater) option selected. I have found that setting sometimes interferes with other configuration options (have to change the role to default, do those changes, and then switch the role back to that role). I am toying with changing the roles on all of the APs to the default Root Access point but am looking for something to point to that as a factor before I bother.
Not all AP's are affected but I probably found 25 in a deployment of 165 or AP's. Also I have no idea when the changes actually occurred. The AP's are fed by power injectors and we are running the IOS 12.3(4) code on them. But I have also noticed this at a smaller location with just 9 AP's running the 12.3(8) code too.
I am trying to find plausible explanations such as switch work (powering off a switch) while AP's are powered up to explain how this could happen. In that case the loss of ethernet activity should cause the AP to change to the repeater role and relay its traffic via the raio interface to a nearby AP if I understand it correctly. And even then it should still be using the channels 1,6 or 11.
Any ideas for this interestingly weird item?
