Understanding statistics from a Cisco WLC?

[ryabutler]

Hello,

From the "Monitor" page on our Cisco WLC.  If you go to "Access Points" from the left side then choose one of the Radios like 802.11b/g/n.  That will list all the APs connected with your controller.

1) First question, some of the APs listed show the "Interference Profile" as "Failed".  What does this mean?  It has connected clients and no one is reporting an issue.  So what does that really mean?

2) Second question, if you go to the "Details" for one of the APs I can see the "802.11 MAC Counters" showing things like Tx Fragments, Tx Failed Count, FCS Error Count, etc.  Below is what I see.

Can someone explain what these statistics are saying?  Again there are no issues reported by our users, but some of these values seem high and I don't understand what they are saying or if there is anything I should be considered with.

Any help on this would be great!

Thank you!

-rya

[Amjad Abdullah]

Hello Rya,

Interference profile failed means the interference the AP experience is higher than the configured threshold. Because of the interference you experience more FCS errors and more retransmissions.

Maybe your users are not feeling this because the interference threshold is low and/or you have low number of users with non-real-time application.

Performance profile can be configured as in this photo:

Press on the performance profile button to modify the threshold.

HTH

Amjad
Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPad App

[msonnie]

For your convenience:

The details of the " 802.11 MAC Counters " :

Counters

Tx Fragment Count

This counter is incremented for an acknowledged MPDU with an individual address in the address 1 field.

Tx Failed Count

This counter increments when an MSDU is successfully transmitted after one or more retransmissions.

Multiple Retry Count (Graphics view only)

This counter shall increment when an MSDU is successfully transmitted after more than one retransmission.

RTS Success Count

This counter increments when a CTS is received in response to an RTS.

ACK Failure Count

This counter increments when an ACK is not received when expected.

Multicast Rx Frame Count

This counter increments when a MSDU is received with the multicast bit set in the destination MAC address.

Tx Frame Count

This counter increments for each successfully transmitted MSDU.

Multicast Tx Frame Count

This  counter increments only when the multicast bit is set in the  destination MAC address of a successfully transmitted MSDU. When  operating as a STA in an ESS, where these frames are directed to the  access point, this implies having received an acknowledgment to all  associated MPDUs.

Retry Count

This counter increments when an MSDU is successfully transmitted after one or more retransmissions.

Frame Duplicate Count

This counter increments when a frame is received that the Sequence Control field indicates is a duplicate.

RTS Failure Count

This counter increments when a CTS is not received in response to an RTS.

Rx Fragment Count

This counter shall be incremented for each successfully received MPDU of type Data or Management.

FCS Error Count

This counter increments when an FCS error is detected in a received MPDU.

WEP Undecryptable Count

This  counter increments when a frame is received with the WEP subfield of  the Frame Control field set to one and the WEPOn value for the key  mapped to the TA's MAC address indicates that the frame should not have  been encrypted or that frame is discarded due to the receiving STA not  implementing the privacy option.

Band Select statistics

When  the feature is activated, the WLC doesn't immediately reply to probe  requests on 11b/g. If immediately a probe is also seen on 11a, then the  client is detected as dual band. Then WLC only replies on 11a. After  some time, this "categorization" expires and WLC will again try to see  if the client is present on both bands.