DCA Channel Updates- Disable per RF Profile

[awatson20]

We have DCA set to perform a channel update every 24 hours with an anchor time of 1am on one of our WLC’s.  This on both bands.  We believe this may be causing an issue at one location where there are wireless kiosks(iPads) that go offline every night at 1am.  IIs there a way to disable the automatic channel updates for a specific AP group / RF profile without having to disable this globally on the controller under DCA?

[Leo Laohoo]

Static channel assignment on a per-AP basis.

[awatson20]

So if I manually set the channel on each AP, DCA or Event driven RRM will not be a factor for those access points?

[Leo Laohoo]

Manually configuring the channels of each AP will disable/stop the controllers from changing the channels.
Honestly, something is smells fishy.
Apple iPads, particularly the newer ones, have no issues when APs change channels. I don't believe the iPads' issue has anything related to the APs changing the channels.

[awatson20]

I agree with you. These are ipads running in a kiosk mode(guided access)
and this occurs every night at 1AM, the same time the channel update
occurs. I at least want to rule this out. They stay associated, but are
in a broken state where they do not communicate.

[Leo Laohoo]

Change the time of the channel change to, say 3am.

[Rich R]

Sounds like a badly written app which doesn't reconnect automatically after a brief loss of comms.

[awatson20]

We did confirm that there is definitely a correlation with the DCA channel update that occurs at 1AM and the ipads in kiosk mode getting hung up.  If we use static channel assignments on the access points, they stay connected and never have an issue.  This worked for weeks while we monitored.  But when using DCA, for whatever reason, periodically after the channel change the ipads stop communicating. From the WLC, they show associated and in the run state.  From the ipad client perspective, you have to disable/enable the wifi adapter in order to restore communications.

[Scott Fella]

So it seems like the iPads don’t work well when the channel changes. I have a few iPads I have and never had an issue with channels changing to be honest. Are the iPads older and are they running the latest updates. I have an older 2nd gen and a new iPad Pro. Really looks like an issue with the iPad and the network stack hanging.

[Leo Laohoo]

Do a side-by-side test with another iPad.
However, instead of using the same app on the 2nd iPad try running, say YouTube.
I suspect the app was developed with the premise of the wireless client not roaming and the AP with static channel.