Please don't take offense to this, as I feel your pain in other areas that have cost some dollars.
I don't think in the past that smartbridges recommended changing the preamble to short from long, unless of course you changed all of the cpe units. Now I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure if you change the AP you have to change the cpe's to use the same preamble as well. ---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Sam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 14:44:32 -0500 (CDT) >Please take a brief moment to read through this. It details a very >frustrating problem I just went through with my Airpoint Pro Outdoor. > >I have an Airpoint Pro that I'm using for an access point (AP). The radio >worked fine for six months. I had a lightning hit, and needed to replace >the radio. > >Along with putting in the new radio, I also upgraded it to 1.4.5j of the >firmware. That day I started having trouble with customers losing >connection to the radio. Upon further investigation I found that the link >from the radio to the Cisco 3550 switch was dropping in and out. The link >light would go dark, the radio will stop responding, and the come back up >again. When it did this the radio didn't reboot - it only lost connection >to the switch. > >Setup: The radio is located on top of a 140-foot water tower. It's plugged >into a Cisco 3550 switch with about 150 feet of cat-5 cable. > >Troubleshooting: I was using a 12v power supply at the bottom of the >tower. This had always worked fine. But to rule out power loss I put an >18v, 1.67 amp power supply on the bottom. The link still went up and down. >So I drug an extension cord up to the top of the tower and put a >Smartbridges 12v power supply at the end of the 50 ft cable that is >hard-wired to the radio. The link still went up and down. > >At this point I ruled out power. > >I replaced the Ethernet cable. Twice. This didn't help. > >I replaced the Cisco 3550. This didn't help. I have two other radios going >into the 3550, one other Airpoint pro and my 5.8 GHz backhaul. Neither of >these radios were having trouble, although the 5.8 YDIs would take input >errors now and then. > >I changed the Airpoint Pro out twice. The problem remained consistent >across all three different Airpoint Pros. I backreved the firmware. That >didn't help. I put on the 1.50 firmware. That didn't help. > >So yesterday morning I got to digging around in the AirPoint Pro setup. I >went to the client info tab and saw connections being established, staying >there for five seconds, and then the page going blank. The connections >would come back, stay for a few seconds, and then fall back off. The >counters on the statistics page would also reset back to zero and start >over. > >So I started fiddling around in the radio's software. The one thing that I >had never tried doing was setting the preamble from "short" to "long". >(I had been told to change it from the default of "long" to "short", that >this was the way to have it set unless you are using non-Smartbridge >equipment for CPE, and that Smartbridges recommends setting this parameter >to "short", though I don't know why it defaults to "long" if the >recommended setting is "short".) As soon as I put the preamble to "long", >the clients stopped falling off. It was a miracle. Could it be this easy? > >I watched this for ten minutes or so, and all seemed well. So I set it >back to "short". Immediately the customers started falling off again. So I >set it back to "long" and watched it for 30 minutes. All was solid. I >drove over to the water tower and watched the link light on the Cisco >3550. It was on solid for the first time in two weeks. I called my wife, >and had her set preamble back to "short". As soon as she did the link >light on the Cisco 3550 from the radio started dropping off every five >seconds or so. As soon as she changed it back to "long" it became solid. > >I hope this will help someone out. This experience has cost me over >$3,000.00 in fees to tower climbers alone, not to mention replacement >radios, time, very angry customers, and an enormous amount of personal >stress. I'd like to preface the next sentence by pointing out that up >until this, I have been very happy with Smartbridges and the performance I >have seen out of their product. But I would be less than honest if I >didn't add that I am more than a bit miffed that Smartbridges would >recommend setting the AP up with the preamble set to "short" and in doing >so, cause this level of unreliability. > >Perhaps the will be addressed on the new and improved web site. :) > >Thanks >Sam > >The PART-15.ORG smartBridges Discussion List >To Join: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (in the body type subscribe smartBridges ><yournickname> >To Remove: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (in the body type unsubscribe smartBridges) >Archives: http://198.63.203.6 >--- >[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus By Avolve.net] > > The PART-15.ORG smartBridges Discussion List To Join: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (in the body type subscribe smartBridges <yournickname> To Remove: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (in the body type unsubscribe smartBridges) Archives: http://198.63.203.6
