OfficeExtend with Personal SSID

Tony Davis · ‎03-21-2011

I have an office extend AP at my house for testing purposes. I can connect to my employer's internal wireless with no problems. Every time I enable any personal SSID, I lose my internal wireless connection to the office. What is causing this?

Thanks in advance,

Tony

Leo Laohoo · ‎03-21-2011

Every time I enable any personal SSID, I lose my internal wireless connection to the office.

Errrr ... I don't want to sound rude or something. Can I just try to understand your issue?

You have an SSID at home, for example, called HOME and your office SSID is called WORK. If you connect to your HOME you can't connect to WORK. Is this your issue?

dmantill · ‎03-21-2011

Follow these steps to setup your SSID

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/wireless/controller/7.0/configuration/guide/c70lwap.html#wp1503894

Remeber that the personal SSID is going to leave you in the network where it is connected. That mean sort of the native vlan. untagged... etc.. .

So what you are saying is that the other SSID just got lost? or that you can not access the internet with the personal SSID? or that you are not able to access anything else? Once you configure this are you even getting an IP address? is it true on both SSIDs?

We need details to be able to help you...

Tony Davis · ‎03-21-2011

I realize that I did not clarify exactly what I mean... so here goes!

1. I can connect to my internal wireless at my office through the office extend AP.

2. I enable the personal SSID through the web GUI on the AP at my house.

3. My laptop loses connectivity to my internal wireless even though it has not connected to the personal SSID.

4. I disable/erase the personal SSID configuration.

5. Mt laptop reconnects to the internal wireless at my office with no intervention required.

At this point, it appears that just enabling the personal SSID forces the internal WLAN to "disappear"... although I can see it with a wireless scanner.

Any ideas?

Tony

dmantill · ‎03-21-2011

Tony

Try to configure the personal SSID and then reload the AP.

Try to manually reconnect and see what happend?

Do you have access to the WLC?

Tony Davis · ‎03-21-2011

I am the wireless administrator and I do have access to WCS and the WLC's...

I have not reloaded the AP after configuring the personal SSID. Let me try that now and I'll post results.

Thanks,

Tony

Tony Davis · ‎03-21-2011

No luck...

New info!

I believe it is an issue with my wireless nic which happens to be intel 5100AGN. I put a standard cisco ABG card in and I can switch between corporate wireless and personal SSID with no problems.

I can switch between the two with my iphone as well.

With my intel 5100AGN, I can connect to corporate wireless initially. If I enable the personal SSID, I stay connected. If I then connect to the personal SSID, I can not go back at that point. The only way to reconnect to corporate wireless is to remove the personal SSID and then connect. After connecting to corp. wireless, I can enable the personal SSID again. i have to repeat this process if I choose to use the personal SSID with my laptop, unless I use the cisco card.

Have you seen weird behavior like this before with an intel wireless nic?

Thanks,
Tony

dmantill · ‎03-21-2011

Yeap so it end up being a wireless client side issue.

Try to update the driver of the wireless card, if ia m not wrong that was the first card with 802.11n, there got to be a lot of caveats to be fixed with some updates. Try that and see what is the result, and then if it persist, try updating the supplicant or using a different one and let us know the result.

Issue might be pointing to how the wireless adapter handles mbssids. (thats my guess)

Tony Davis · ‎03-21-2011

I did update the driver to the latest provided by intel but had no luck. We allow WPA-TKIP and WPA2-AES and my laptop won't connect on either once I've connected to the personal SSID. You mentioned updating the supplicant. Did you mean just trying a different authentication method or did you really mean updating the supplicant? If it's the latter, how in the world do you update supplicants?

Thanks,

Tony

dmantill · ‎03-21-2011

Tony

Suppliant as the software that is managing the authentication and the wireless connection.

When using Windows built in option you are using WZC.

Intel cards uses IntelPro set.

Cisco card uses ADU. Broadcom and atheros has its own too

however

There are other 3rd party supplicants. For example Cisco Secure Services Client

If I am not wrong OAC and secureW2 are other options (I havent use these)

A free version is Open1x

Either way, if you are using a different supplicant than WZC sometimes there are some updates for it different than the driver version.

However it still interesting try to run debugs from the WLC when wireless adapter is attempting to connect.

At first are you using Windows XP or Vista or 7?

What is the current driver version installed?

Tony Davis · ‎03-22-2011

Ok.. so I am using 7 and my driver version is 13.5.0.6 which is the latest from Intel. I've come to understand that I can not use intel to manage my wireless connection b/c 7 doesn't allow it. Intel Proset can be used to manage wireless profiles, but not the nic. Do you agree with my findings?

Thanks,

Tony

dmantill · ‎03-22-2011

Yes, 7 trys to keep using the WZC

What I can tell you is that I have seen different behaviors with same driver and different supplicant.

Try to run debugs from the WLC side to see what might be going on

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ps430/products_tech_note09186a008091b08b.shtml