iPhone/iPad Connectivity Issues with 5508 WLC's

[pennwestenergy]

Hello,

We are implementing a new corporate wireless network with Cisco 5508 WLC's and C3602I LWAP's. We are not running any RADIUS or EAP at the moment and are starting with WPA2 w/ AES with a pre-shared key to begin piloting.

The issue we are having is iOS based devices (iPhone/iPad) do not seem to want to connect. We just get a could not join wireless network messages. We have had success with several Windows based laptops, my MacBook connects, as well as several different Android devices.

Looking at the logs on the WLC I see these entries which correspond to the MAC address of my iPhone.

*apfMsConnTask_6: Jul 17 17:25:20.620: %APF-3-CHECK_SUPP_RATES_FAILED: apf_utils.c:376 Could not check supported rates. Missing Supported Rate. Length :0. Mobile MAC: 24:ab:81:92:4d:97.

Does anyone have any ideas or have run into this problem before?

Any help would greatly be appreciated.

Thanks!

Andrew

[lisacoody]

This is what made the difference for me. Thanks, Scott!

[pennwestenergy]

Hi Dave,

We are running the Aironet C3602i Light Weight AP's. Here is our data rate settings:

Thanks,

Andrew

[sin]

Try to enable all data rates. Just for a test. I'm testing iphone / ipad data rates at the moment and there seem to be some kind of bug in ios. If I enable 1Mbps (supported) it works

[Scott Fella]

I have had no issues disabling everything below 11 and making 24mbps or higher mandatory and all others supported. This is with iOS 5 & 6 with iPhone and iPad.

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[mrCua]

i will try

[bdial]

We are having similar problems.  We havea 5508 with about 25 3500 series APs.  We have 3 wlans.  2 are wpa2 psk and 1 is wpa2 enterprise radius authd.  The apple devices never have problems connecting to the wpa2 enterprise ssid, but reguarly have problems connecting to one or both of the wpa2 psk ssids.  right now we i am sitting at my desk with my laptop and android phone cconnected to one of the wpa2 psk networks, but the ipad refuses to join.  A coworker sitting next to me can't get his to join either, but can get any other non apple device to join.

The only log I can find that matches my ipad's mac says

*dot11a: Nov 28 09:21:35.574: %RRM-3-RRM_LOGMSG: rrmLrad.c:3702 RRM LOG: Client not found: E0:B9:BA:22:13:4D

I'm running the latest 7.2 code but thinking of switching to 7.3 to see if that helps.  I'm going to go through and try some of the things suggested in this thread

Edit: I'm also seeing

*dot1xMsgTask: Nov 28 09:42:45.308: %DOT1X-3-MAX_EAPOL_KEY_RETRANS: 1x_ptsm.c:456 Max EAPOL-key M3 retransmissions exceeded for client e0:b9:ba:22:13:4d

[Scott Fella]

I have had no issues with any of the 7.x code. What I know is that if I have issues with my iPad or iPhone with wireless, I would forget the network and enter it again. One thing also... is the pre-shared key... are you using any special characters or something that might be the cause?

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[Leo Laohoo]

Try creating an SSID with OPEN authentication.

What firmware is your WLC running?

What OS is your iPhone running?

Just want to clarify things, if your firmware is 7.0.X, and you have this problem(s), you (or your co-worker) is sitting STILL and not roaming around.  Am I correct?

[Scott Fella]

Well there have been issues with some iPhone 5

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4322714?start=570&tstart=0

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[bdial]

my coworker and i both had ios6 ipads.  we were sitting at our desks not moving.  Later in the day, my coworker said he got an ipad in the mail that we had sent out for repair.  he said he turend it on and it connected to the same ssid ours were failing on right away.  i didn't think til today to check the ios version and it's already been given back to the user.  Bouyed by that knowledge, coworker said that he reset the network settings on his ipad, then tried to connect.  it failed the first time, but he hit join again and it succeeded.

I wanted to try a few things before i went that route too.  Being a huge nerd, I have an AP at home that is on hte same controller through a vpvn i have to work so i can have the same ssids at home (it's in flexconnect mode).  Thinking maybe the ipads were having trouble with hearing multiple APs (we have several in our office), I wanted to try it on just one.  When I got home, still unable to connect to either wpa2 psk ssid.  However, my wife's ipad which is ios5 and has never seen another ap but our home one was connected to one of the ssids.

I upgraded the controller and aps to the 7.3 code last night.  waited for my home ap to reboot, and tried again.  no luck.  So I then reset the network config on my ipad, and just like my coworker I tried to connect to one of the wpa2 psk ssids and it failed the first time, but pressing join again it went through and connected the second time.  I still cannot connect to the second wpa2 psk network though, no matter how many times I retry the join.  The wpa2 enterprise ssid never has any problem

edit: lol cisco censors the word n3rd

[bdial]

fast ssid seems to have done the trick for me.  i reset my network settings on the ipad and tried to connect to hte ssid htat usually failed the first time and it connected right up quickly.  thaks everyone

[pennwestenergy]

Since I last posted we were having no issues with our 5508 deployment until I released Wi-Fi to the rest of our IT department.

Previously only the network team was using Wi-Fi to test things out and make sure it is working before we release it to the rest of the company. We added the rest of IT to the group of test users and a new issue has come up.

95% of the clients have had no issues connecting (Androids, Apple iDevices, Blackberry's, Windows Laptops). However I have two users with Windows laptops that are having issues.

One device is a Dell laptop with our corporate Windows 7 image. We have other users with the same laptop and image and they connect fine. The other is someone with an Asus laptop running Windows 8.

The message that pops up in the logs for both users is:

*dot1xMsgTask: Dec 11 11:04:39.485: %DOT1X-3-MAX_EAPOL_KEY_RETRANS: 1x_ptsm.c:456 Max EAPOL-key M1 retransmissions exceeded for client e0:b9:a5:9a:87:6e

However we do not run an Dot1x authentication. We only are using WPA2 with a pre-shared key.

We had an issue with iPad doing the same thing but eventually it started working.

I am learly to release this into full production until this is resolved. Anyone else run into this? Or have any idea's?

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

[George Stefanick]

Andrew

Specific to the windows 8 issue. If you are on 7.x code you need to make sure youre on 7.0.235.3 due to the a Cisco issue and windows mfp.

. As for 802.1X, confusing I know. Actually the 4 way handshake for psk and 802.1X eap is the same and the controller categorizes this as 8021X

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[pennwestenergy]

Thanks for the reply Scott and George. We are running the 7.2.110.0 code. I will look at getting an outage to upgrade the latest version.

I will also have our desktop team upgrade the drivers/client software on the corporate laptop and re-create the profile. I will let you guys know the outcome of that.

Andrew

[Scott Fella · Accepted solution]

The error is with psk... Looks to be like a client issue so upgrade the driver and delete the wireless profile and create it again. Your running the latest code on the 7.2 or you on the 7.3. As you know windows 8 has issues unless you run the latest 7.0, 7.2 code or 7.3.

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