Takes forever to connect.... WLC EWC 9120axi

[Mariusz00001]

I have a thinkpad laptop (490s) with an 802.11ac card in it. I takes like 1 minute for that laptop to connect. What's worse, when it goes to sleep, wakes up - 2 minutes. Also, every 2-3 hours it disconnects and takes a few minutes to reconnect (in many cases message in Windows says 'I can't connect...')

I am not an expert in Cisco WLC so please advise - how can I get some logs to see why this is happening? Where can I find logs showing these errors and why that laptop fails to connect?

No issues with another AP (tested with a Zyxel one - no problems, stable for 24 hours).

[marce1000]

-  Issue this command first on the problematic AP:
                          show  ap client-trace events mac <laptop mac address> . Then during the connecting process (and later) follow up on the outputs shown or check the logs on the AP

   - Further engage in full client debugging according to https://logadvisor.cisco.com/logadvisor/wireless/9800/9800ClientConnectivity , these debugs can be analyzed with Wireless Debug Analyzer

  - Outputs from the commands mentioned in https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless/catalyst-9800-series-wireless-controllers/217738-monitor-catalyst-9800-kpis-key-performa.html#toc-hId-866973845 (corrected) can also be useful

   Have a checkup of the EWC   configuration with the CLI command show tech wireless and feed the output to : Wireless Config Analyzer

  M.

[Scott Fella]

I have had experience in the past with users whom said the same thing.  This might not be your issue, but they never shut down their machine and when they come to the office, it took their laptops a few minutes before it connects and when the device goes to sleep, it would also take a long time.  The reboot helps, but they also had a very old driver and also had other wireless profiles on their machine, so it would connect to guest or try a different SSID that they saved. 

You can run this command in elevated mode so you can actually see what is happening on the windows machine. 
netsh wlan show wlanreports duration="7".  The duration is optional, but you can see what SSID  the device is connecting to, any error and if there was a driver crash.

[Mariusz00001]

Thank you, very close because I put my PC to sleep but it happens after a reboot, too. To be fair - this is a 802.11ac card, no way to replace it (thanks Lenovo for doing that in a business laptop ;-)).

because it was just one PC, I ended up connecting a WiFi 6 usb card for the time being, I will debug it later.

Having said that, I have another AP - 1852 and there was one laptop (Yoga) with the same issue. So there is a pattern.

Thanks!

[Scott Fella]

Well at least you started to discover things.  That is the only way to determine the possible impact.

[Rich R]

You don't mention the vendor of the WiFi adapter and driver version being used or the version of code being used on EWC so ...
- Make sure drivers are fully up to date.  For Intel see https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19351/intel-wireless-wi-fi-drivers-for-windows-10-and-windows-11.html if older version of adapter then might need to look for latest version of older driver.
- For EWC refer to TAC recommended link below.