Wow...weird results

[sligbot]

So we had something really strange happen to us today. Signals on our 2 port WRAP board sudenly dropped randomly for about 15 minutes by about 20dB. Very strange...the only thing we can think of is random 2.4GHz interference or...sunspots????
All the signals came back up slowly on their own and we just watched in amazment :)
Anybody have thoughts or words of wisdom?
--Rich

[Stratolinks]

I haven't checked for unusualy sun spot activity, but we have been seeing soem wierd stuff for the last couple weeks too. A site that has been runnung for years on a particular channel suddenly goe to very low signal levels and most of the clients go to N in the association list. Change the channel by 1 and everything is suddenly perfect again. These are on old 1x sites and this has happened several times at very different locations on the network.

I still recall one particular client site. Their antenna is in a perfect line not only to the site they get their service from, but to another tower 37km away. It detected the other tower at -86dB, the closer tower at -65dB. By the topo map I didn't think there could be line of sight between them, but there must be to get that signal over that distance.

[kbldawg]

...A site that has been runnung for years on a particular channel suddenly goe to very low signal levels and most of the clients go to N in the association list. Change the channel by 1 and everything is suddenly perfect again...

Is it the change in channel or the card being reset that fixes the problem?

We see the "N"s because of less than adequate clients connections. When that happens, most clients go to "N".

By going into the "Wireless Configuration" and clicking " OK " (you don't have to change anything, just click " OK "), then a file > activate changes... and it will kick everyone off and make them reassociate. This usually fixes it until I can find the offending customer and make them go away.

If you will start looking at each and every client, you will most likely find one that has a very poor connection and is causing the problem. Get rid of that customer's poor connection and you'll get rid of the mysterious "N".

[kbldawg]

So we had something really strange happen to us today. Signals on our 2 port WRAP board sudenly dropped randomly for about 15 minutes by about 20dB. Very strange...the only thing we can think of is random 2.4GHz interference or...sunspots????
All the signals came back up slowly on their own and we just watched in amazment :)
Anybody have thoughts or words of wisdom?
--Rich

How long does this cycle take?


Moisture problem? (Antennas, Transimission Lines)
Loose connections on your transmission lines? (I just did this one the other day)
Lots of interference?

[sligbot]

We didn't have any issues with clients going to "n". Just strangely low signals. The really weird thing was that you could see them come back up, gaining 1 or 2 db per minute. Then suddenly "bam" full power. Very strange.

--Rich

[Stratolinks]

On the 3 sites that we have seen this happen on, ALL clients go N associations until we move the channel, simply simulating a change and activating it did not help. We have never seen this on a x2 cloaked AP. These are a few remote sites where we have a small number of customers with a couple of them with signal levels around -80. Another V3 site that has 3 times as many clients on it and has 3 customers with -80 to -82 and has never seen the issue.

As we work in some system upgrades we are weeding out the weak clients, but this behavior does seem odd

I had even tried changing the channel activating then change the channel back to what it was originally and activating again. Most of the clients could not pass data even if they could get an association. Change to one channel away from where it was and away they go. I have even put the AP into client mode and done scans to see what we could find in the area, and couldn't find anything that would attribute to the interference (at least not in any 'standard' 2.4GHz mode, ie 1x,2x,4x,1xturbo).