Wifi - connectivity issues

[shehan311]

Hi,

We have about 70 APs with one WLC. About 4 SSID's configured with 2.4 and 5Ghz radios. Used to lose connection constently specially for guest network and corporate network  in only one area. Two Ap's are installed within 10m distance in a corridor.

Observations :

1- Coverage hole detection alerts noted for (802.11a clients )2 APs and one of it detects quite regularly. 

2- I used Insidder software and couldn't see 5Ghz SSID's

3-  in One of those APs, channel utilization is between 40 - 60 %, the one with with less alerts is 16 % an it is for 2.4G. But still can see clients are associating to 5ghz radio and channel utilization is low.

4- Clean air is not enabled on those two Aps.

5- one AP is using channel 1 and the other is on 11.

6- in This area the client associations change rapidly between those 2 APs.

7- Voice clients are also there with Platinum Qos.

Questions

1- Could enabling clean air can cause any issues ? To detect interference devices if any ?

 2- Could it be due to network interference , device faulty , or higher density traffic ?

I have also attached some information herewith.

Thank you.

[amandatheloves]

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@shehan311 wrote:

Hi,

We have about 70 APs with one WLC. About 4 SSID's configured with 2.4 and 5Ghz radios. Used to lose connection constantly specially for guest network and corporate network  in only one area. Two Ap's are installed within 10m distance in a corridor.

Observations :

1- Coverage hole detection alerts noted for (802.11a clients )2 APs and one of it detects quite regularly. 

2- I used best Insidder software and couldn't see 5Ghz SSID's

3-  in One of those APs, channel utilization is between 40 - 60 %, the one with with less alerts is 16 % an it is for 2.4G. But still can see clients are associating to 5ghz radio and channel utilization is low.

4- Clean air is not enabled on those two Aps.

5- one AP is using channel 1 and the other is on 11.

6- in This area the client associations change rapidly between those 2 APs.

7- Voice clients are also there with Platinum Qos.

Questions

1- Could enabling clean air can cause any issues ? To detect interference devices if any ?

 2- Could it be due to network interference , device faulty , or higher density traffic ?

I have also attached some information herewith.

Thank you.

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Yes, me too facing the same issue and i tried the network interference diagnosis...still not resolved it..i hope i will get the best solution here..my jobs are almost pending due to this...

[Leo Laohoo]

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@shehan311 wrote:

Could enabling clean air can cause any issues ? To detect interference devices if any ?

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Depends if the APs support CleanAir or not. 

There are some industries, like Healthcare, do not like to enable CleanAir.

[shehan311]

Hi Leo,

Thank you for the reply. Why do you think enabling Clean air is not so good for certain industries if AP's are supporting ? I think it is only analyzing the spectrum and identifying interference. Therefore I don't think it will trouble the AP wifi data transmission or other surrounding devices except spectrum monitoring.

It should be displaying interfering devices as it is happening now only for 2 APs among 70 APs.

I was bit lost in between whether this could be due to interference or any other reasons such as a AP failure.

Regards

Shehan Fernando

[Leo Laohoo]

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@shehan311 wrote:

Why do you think enabling Clean air is not so good for certain industries if AP's are supporting

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Not every wireless clients are coded nicely.  Health industry is, in my personal experience, is most notorious for wireless NIC that have very bad wireless NIC drivers in them.  

CleanAir means the AP can, potentially, move channels in order to avoid co-channel interference.  Some wireless devices do not like that. 

[Arshad Safrulla]

First make sure that the wireless card of your device supports 5Ghz and if it supports 5GHz radio is enabled on the client device. Also make sure that you are running the latest drivers for Wireless NIC. To view the capablilites of the wireless card you can try the below command from CLI.

netsh wlan show wirelesscapabilities

Then from the WLC prospective make sure that the problematic AP's have both the radio's enabled. 

show ap dot11 5ghz summary

Also check whether the WLAN/AP groups have proper RF profiles selected (Band select is enabled to steer the client to 5GHz, so no problem there) Also mention the AP models, WLC model and the code running, Client information you tested with etc.

As Leo mentioned Clean Air brings you lot of benefits, but only if you have clean air capable AP's then only you can use this feature. If not you can use Spectrum Intelligence (toned down version of Clean Air) in supported AP's. Enabling Clean Air will not bring you any harm, you will be able to see lot of granular information related to the spectrum. Depending the WLC model and the load (talking about fully loaded WLC's), it may have an small impact, but for you considering that you have only 70 AP's I don't think you should worry.

[shehan311]

Hi,

Thank you for your update. Actually I found that those APs do not have clean air. Just wonder whether an firmware upgrade could add that ?

IOS version is : 15.2(2)JB$

Primary software version  is 7.4.100.0

So it does not have SE connect either. I was thinking to find another AP and on site, do the spectrum analysis with Se-connect. So it might provide interfering devices list. Any other ideas.

Thanks

[shehan311]

and also those APS are AIR-CAP1602I-Z-K9  end of life. So I think an firmware upgrade is possible.