Zebra RF guns and cisco AP connectivity

[victoriabardy]

Hello All,

We have a warehouse that is experiencing a number of issues with their zebra scanner RF guns.  The guns are occasionally freezing and having issues roaming.  We have two kinds of Cisco AP in the warehouse, AIR-AP3802I-B-K9 and AIR-CAP3702I-B-K9.

Does anyone here on the forums know of any cisco documentation around compaitbility with these kinds of RF guns?

Any feedback here would be great.

Thank you.

[Leo Laohoo]

Did you try to upgrade/update the firmware of the guns?

[victoriabardy]

Yes my co-worker updated the firmware on the guns.

[Leo Laohoo]

The guns are compatible with Cisco wireless.  Does the guns have the same behaviour with an OPEN authentication?

What firmware is the controller running on?

[zhibowan]

got the same issue, gun freeze, session last for minutes, some time dropout. any idea?

by the way, how many SSID you are using and what is the profile?

[pwwiddicombe]

Are you running 5 or 2.4 ghz channels for the Zebra guns?  Older releases of the firmware on the guns would refuse to connect to the Unii-2 channels in 5 Ghz.

[LorealPrime]

I have this problem too. 

I have a WLC with software 8.3.102.0

In my case the guns lost conectivity but don't lost association with WLC.

This happens when the gun does roaming from an AP3802 to an AP2602.

the ping goes down, but in the controller, the gun looks associated.

Somebody Knows the reason or solution?

Regards and thank you

[LorealPrime]

Hello:

The issue its a problem with the version of the WLC software, at least in my case. I have updgrade the WLC to version 8.3.12.1.0 and the guns are working well now.

[joshua.kowis]

I had this problem with the Zebra hand held scanners, constant and random drops from wireless in a warehouse setting. To solve the problem I had to adjust the data rates, turn off the SSID for the guns on the 2.4 Ghz band. I continued to allow the SSID on the 5 Ghz band and increased the power to ensure that there were not any issues with coverage areas. Once I had made these changes I noticed significant improvements with the Zebra guns ability to stay connected to the wireless throughout the warehouse. (Went from 10 - 50 drops per day per gun to 0 - 2 drops per day total.)

[MysticFoxDE]

Hi @ All,

I had the same issues the days.

One of our customers change his devices from Symbol MC9090 to Zebra TC8000.

Since them, there was no day without trouble

The following optimizations help and not only on Cisco environment. 😊

1. Limit the band for the used SSID to 2.4 GHz (AP & Device)

    There is no need to use 5 GHz, lower distance, more noise.

    The only one is the higher speed … no need for MDE.

2. Limit the bandwidth to 1 – 2 MBit, the device should only connect over 11b. (AP)

3. Use only channel 1,6,11 for the 2.4 GHz on the AP.

    If possible don’t use channel negotiation, setup the APs to use a fix channel.

    Also, setup the devices to use only these three channels.

4. Don’t use automatic transmit power control.

    Never use more than 20 dBm inclusive antenna.

    My best experience is ~ 18 dBm.

    Use external antennas if possible.

5. Disable 802.11r, 802.11k, 802.11v on the used SSID.

6. Disable any WiFi power management on the Device (always on).

7. Update the Devices to the latest firmware.

Specially for Zebra Devices with Android OS, there is another option to make special WiFi-Setting.

See Link below.

http://techdocs.zebra.com/mx/wifi/

Best regards from Germany

Alexander

P.S. The Zebra TC8000 use only these four 5GHz channels, 36, 40, 44, 48, per default, the rest is not enabled. ☹

[Clem58]

We had problem with Zebra MC92N0 scanners and Cisco 3802 APs, 3802I and 3802E models.

To resolve the issue and as we are not able to upgrade the WLC for the moment, here is our solution:

• Remove WMM on SSID
• Remove cleanair feature on APs

[tcggg0]

Remove Clean Air? That's a new one. We had to disable UNII-2 on 5 GHz.

[joe.fodor]

the Zebra 9200s dont come with 5ghz UNI-2 channels enabled. If you are running UNI-2 in your network the handhelds will not connect at all if they roam to an AP using these channels.

You can turn the channels on manually on each handheld to fix this issue. Also I have been reading that it may be a good idea to disable the larger data rates such as 54mbps for environments using handhelds. 

[tcggg0]

Disable 802.11ac as well.

[joe.fodor]

why would you disable 802.11ac? 2.4 in a big warehouse with a lot of APs will cause you to have more issues. We force the handhelds to only use 5ghz and seems to help a lot. Every now and then we find a handheld using only 2.4 and once we force it to use 5ghz it helps a lot.