What would cause the SM to take up to 10 minutes to associate to an AP?
We have this happen every once in awhile and I can not find a patern to it.
When the SM does associate, the signal, rates and speeds are good. We are using AP Pre-shared key for security. Not sure if that is an issue.
Having more than the freqneices you need and the channel bandwidths you need selected will slow it down. We now only select the channels we need and the bandwidth we need and it's down to a much shorter period.
We just do the bandwidth we need, but leave all the frequency's checked in case we need to change the frequency on the AP due to interference. Most of the SMs connect within 1 minute. I just have some that take up to 10 minutes sometimes.
Dito on selecting the minimal number of frequencies and channel bandwidth.
Our techs were also finding that if they rotated the antennas 90* in their hands while testing, the radios would associate without such a delay. It appears that the SMs much match the AP in regards to A and B polarity. Unfortunately, the SMs and the client antennas are not labeled A and B. It appears the left radio connector is A. Not sure about the antennas.
Hope this helps!
The antenna rotate test is the giveaway to the problem. The PMP450 sends the beacon on the Vertical in V/H radios, or the + in +/- 45 radios. If the antenna leads are not connected correctly, the beacon is as much as 15db down in signal strength from where it should be, making it very difficult to connect.
@APD wrote:
The antenna rotate test is the giveaway to the problem. The PMP450 sends the beacon on the Vertical in V/H radios, or the + in +/- 45 radios. If the antenna leads are not connected correctly, the beacon is as much as 15db down in signal strength from where it should be, making it very difficult to connect.
What APD says above is true. However, beggining with Release 13.2, the AP sends the beacons on both paths.
Checking a lot of frequencies will increase the scan time. It even more when the SM has to scan for both 2.5ms and 5ms frame. Some of the posters have good suggestions to reduce scan time. In the meantime, the team has been working to further optimize the scanning algorithm to speed it up. You will see these enhancements in the up coming releases this year.
Thanks,
Sriram
Thanks Sririam,
Does AP Selection Method have any effect on the scan time?
FYI, We observed this behaivor on 14.1.1
We have noticed a sizeable increase in the amount of time an out-of-the-box SM takes to associate (PMP-450, 3.65 GHz); it seems to me this started when we upgraded to v15.0.3. Of course, a raw SM will have all frequencies and bandwidths enabled, so I understand it would take more time. However, we didn't experience this prior to the new software. Lately it has taken up to five minutes to connect to the AP, which is unacceptable. Does anyone have any suggestions about reducing that time? We've lost customers lately because the field tech assumes he can't connect after his tone drops out for so long.