I’ve received no reports of problems from the 6th floor, but then again since 
those are impromptu conference rooms there’s no guarantee there’s anyone in 
there often enough to see an issue.

Last night we rebooted all the AP’s and the controller after reverting a change 
made yesterday afternoon. So far today there have been no reports of any 
problems. Frustrating…

Dave

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On 
Behalf Of Daniel Chenault
Sent: Friday, September 20, 2013 10:28 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Troubleshooting wireless - advice - multiple answers

What's happening on the 6th floor in the vicinity of those rooms?

And all this science I don't understand
It's just my job five days a week

Elton John "Rocket Man"

On Sep 13, 2013, at 11:50, "David Lum" 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Answers to multiple e-mails

Laptop hardware info:
Multiple Dell laptops and Macbooks
Multiple NIC vendors
Windows and MAC OS’s
Unsure if a reboot clears the issue

Location information:
Same area of the building (north side)
Different times of the day
Rooms are toward the edge of the building
Building is 7 floors high, problem reports have come from 5th and 7th floor

Infrastructure information:
50 dual-band AP’s
Signal strength as measured by iNSSIDer  never weaker than 60dB and typically 
there are multiple AP’s stronger than 65dB
Walking the floor, by the time one AP’s signal strength has dropped below 60dB 
you are then closer to another AP with a signal stronger than 60dB
Per Meru, all AP’s are on the same channels, all AP’s are set to full broadcast 
power

Usage information:
User activity at the time varies from looking at a web page
Different times of the day
* unknown the duration the users have this issue

Dave


Can you swap APs to see if the problem follows the AP?
Different hardware might rule out drivers.
Are these two rooms next to each other on the same AP or different areas and 
different Aps?
How long does it usually last? Does it clear itself or is a reboot needed?
Same time or completely varies?
When it’s happening, if someone else comes in does it happen to them?
Are they always in the same spot?


From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Micheal Espinola Jr
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2013 5:28 PM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Troubleshooting wireless - advice

I'm assuming this is a roaming issue between multiple APs with the same SSID.  
If not, please correct me.


  1.  Which brand are the mobile devices that are experiencing issues with 
these APs?
  2.  Who makes the NIC chipsets on these devices?
  3.  If a problematic device is hard-reset while in close-range of the AP its 
having connectivity issues with, does the problem continue?
  4.  What is the radio channel of the AP with problematic clients - and what 
are the radio channels of its nearest (3) neighbors?

--
Espi


On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 1:00 PM, David Lum 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Scenario: Five floors, 50 AP’s managed by a single controller (Meru). A few 
(less than ten, more than two) users report connectivity issues in two 
different small conference/meeting rooms.


•         Throughput/capacity limits are not being approached

•         These rooms are used largely ad-hoc, so rarely are the people who 
report problems in the same room consecutive days.

•         Users with reporting issues do not report problems in any other 
areas/floors of the building

•         Users reporting issues are not streaming video, and in some cases are 
sitting idle reading a document

•         Other users have no problems in the areas/room that these few users 
report problems

•         Two of the users reporting problems in the same room are on 
completely different hardware/software (Dell+Win7, Mac+MacOS)

Our suspicion is a malfunctioning AP in the area, the confusing part is not 
everyone is reporting an issue in the areas that a few people are having 
problems from.

I am working with our vendor (Meru), but it’s a laborious process of looking at 
logs, making a change, and then “let us know if the users still report a 
problem”. This method can result in three/four days between making a change and 
the user going back into the affected area.

Today Meru had us disable the AP closest to that room, but I’d love some advice 
on a better way to systematically get at this in case the bum AP is not the 
issue. Swapping machines is the least desirable option here (doable, but these 
are busy folks in transit a lot).

It doesn’t help that two of the users are director-level and one of THOSE is my 
boss’ boss….
David Lum
Sr. Systems Engineer // NWEATM
Office 503.548.5229<tel:503.548.5229> // Cell (voice/text) 
503.267.9764<tel:503.267.9764>


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