2.4 GHz ePMP 1000 AP, Froce 200 SM's - Keep all dropping off and failing to reconnect.

Products ePMP
1

Currently have a setup with 34 subbscribers using force 200s, connecting to an AP using ePMP 1000 gps sync radio.

It seems, randomly, all of them will disconnect at once.  They all try and reconnect, but keep dropping.  If I simply reboot the radio, they all come back and work fine for a day or so.  Its very strange.  Several SM's are in a smoke ping, and the pings are very steady and consistant, until the drop in connection.. 

Everything is runnin SW 3.51.

Any idea what might be causing this?  Edetect on the AP side doesn't shows a clean channel.

2

Are you having GPS drops? That would cause this. Trying enabling and looking in the logs for GPS sync loss.

ALSO, update to 3.5.6... or 4.4 if you want to squeeze a bit better performance (10%) out of your AP.

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3

So it worked fine for a week with no changes.  But today I noticed it was off for a few hours.  I can log into the AP fine.  And see 2-3 people connected for only a few mins.  No gps sync lost in the system logs.  But customers are constantly connecting and dropping and reconnecting.   Any other guesses?

4

Simply rebooting the AP, fixes everything, customers all come right back online and lock on.  The AP is on a fixed channel as well.

5

Barry, what firmware is on AP and SM’s?

6

3.51  But they have been working fine for a year or more until just recently.

I think we did have to add a couple SM's with newer firmware, since they wouldn't down grade to 3.51  So we put them to 4.4.  Is it possible a newer firmware SM is causing the issue?

7

not 100% sure at this point but. . . . .

out of curiousity; what is your gps hold-off time set to?

we found that if you get a gps timing issue such as a flakey GPS antenna, that does not trigger the syslog that the hold-off timer would cause a radio sync drop. we found that it needs to be set to a high number to prevent this. the default number we found to be way too low, double it and everything seems to work fine. since this metric is in seconds, 3600 is 1hr, 84600 is one day.

these issues are frustrating, keep making small changes and make sure all AP's that are on the same tower and those that can be seen from that tower are all set the same.

8

It was set to 300..  I upped it to 600.. But the default value is 30 I believe?   It actually went off again, thats when I changed the setting.  And saving brought all customers back online.  The GPS dropped, and reconnected when I saved that setting, and everyone came back normal.  No need for the reboot to fix things..  Maybe its a GPS issue? but it typically has 18 being tracked.  And I think it was happening before in Flexable mode, which wouldnt be using the GPS anyways.. Can always switch it back to flexable to try if it keeps dropping clients.

9
@Barry e wrote:

3.51  But they have been working fine for a year or more until just recently.

For us, we've been running 3.5.6 on all our ePMP1000/2000 if they have all ePMP100/200 series (all "N") clients, such as the 2.4Ghz AP/SM's.  We've been running 4.4 on all ePMP3000's - or any ePMP2000's which have a mixture of 200/300 SMs.  So - the short answer would be:  We're running all our 2.4Ghz AP/CPE with 3.5.6

Now, that being said - I agree that if 3.5.1 has been running for a year, it's unlikely that it's a firmware issue exactly.  However, some new environmental or interference issue, might be 'tickling' a but in 3.5.1 which you never encountered before.  I mean... if 3.5.1 was 100% perfectly bug free, they never would have made 3.5.2-3.5.6  :)

So, if it was me - that's where I'd start.  At 3.5.6 on all AP and SM, and see what happens there.  I'd also make sure that all syncing with all other AP's are OK.  Perhaps this AP isn't losing GPS sync, but perhaps one of your other nearby ones is... and then it'll slowly drift off timing, which can cause interference.  It the symptoms are caused by another AP, that doesn't really explain why rebotting the symtomatic AP resolves it though.  I don't know, but for me: 3.5.6 is where I'd start and go from there. :)

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10
@Barry e wrote:

3.51  But they have been working fine for a year or more until just recently.

I think we did have to add a couple SM's with newer firmware, since they wouldn't down grade to 3.51  So we put them to 4.4.  Is it possible a newer firmware SM is causing the issue?

Please make sure that your AP and ALL of your SM's are running 3.5.6. Make sure that NONE of your SM's are running 4.4.

There's a bug I discovered that I'm working with dev's on AP's running 3.5.6... where if there are mixed 3.5.6 and 4.4 clients, the AP will dump all the clients every so often and it takes a reboot to get it working for awhile longer.

If you're using e1k for 2.4GHz... then every one of your clients should be capable of running 3.5.6.

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