I apologize if this is a known issue. We’ve been testing our 4500L with both 400CSM and 4525 SM’s and have noticed that it doesn’t take a lot for them to go incommunicado with the AP.
On the 400CSM it occurred while we were trying different frequencies. The unit quit responding to pings or SNMP queries, yet the AP showed it was connected. We tried deregistering the SM, which the AP then showed reconnected with no change. We rebooted the AP, it showed the SM reconnected, still with no change. We had the customer do a hard reboot by killing the power and the unit recovered.
This morning we were working on another 4500L AP basically doing the same thing with a 4525 and it worked fine with the first two changes and then it also went into some weird half state, responding to a ping, but not via SNMP, nor would it allow us to connect via the GUI, just timing out. We tried different browsers, HTTP and HTTPS with no difference. A few minutes later the SM dropped the connection and eventually reconnected after about 5 minutes. After the reconnect, It was extremely slow to reconnect via the GUI, taking several minutes to allow entry, reporting LOADING BOARD. Once it finally let us in, it took a couple of attempts but I was able to download the maintenance file and then performed a reboot. The reboot on the 4525, as on the F400CSM, appears to stabilize things.
We have turned the watchdog function on for the SM’s, though in the case of the 4525, it always responded to a ping when connected.
I submitted a ticket with the maintenance file from the 4525 attached.
Ive only had one unit behave like that out of somewhere around 120 units and it was fairly early on. I finally came to the conclusion that it was a bad unit and replaced it. When i replaced the unit i put it in the wrong box. The unit was updated and sent back out to the field. I kept an eye on it for several weeks and never noticed the issue again. Since it went back out to the field without any issues, maybe it wasnt bad? Im not sure. Maybe try reflashing the firmware again and seeing if that fixes it.
Depending on the firmware version, there was one of them (i think there was several honestly) that addressed some GUI instability. I was under the impression that it was more for the AP side, but it couldve been for the SM side as well.
Definitely try updating to the latest firmware before doing anything. There some pretty big changes in the last couple of firmwares and your issue is likely to be solved just by updating
Running the latest 5.7. May be a bad radio. The seem to run solid unless I screw with them. Its like it gets confused when chaining AP frequencies and the AP shows the SM connected in the wireless table, yet the SM shows its not.
You might want to try the newest 5.8 beta. If after trying 5.8, and as a last resort, factory default, and if it’s still misbehaving, I think it’s time to swap in a different/new radio.