I’m new to this game so forgive me if something is a little “off”.
About three weeks ago we put up our first 900MHz ap with a pig tailed omni antenna. At this location we currently only have one customer on this ap who is about 3 miles from the tower with great los. When we first installed this customer we had a strong signal 1500 Rssi and 4-5 jitter. We could actually register from 21 miles away with the SM in the dash of the pickup with a high rssi and low jitter.
Last week the customer called complaining the connection was not working. So, we troubleshoot at the customers house and realize the radio is not registered. Armed with a new SM we head out to see from where we can register with the ap. Here’s the weird thing, within two miles from the ap we have no problem connecting, but outside of two miles in any direction we cannot connect. We can see rssi values of 1500 for up to 15 - 20 miles away but cannot register. We’ve replaced the antenna simply because we were going to anyway but did not fix our problem. We did have some fierce lightning storms come through during this time. But if thats the case, then why can we get a signal at all and connect if we are within two miles.
Again, i’m new to this, so please let me know if you need more information to give advise. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
What is the AP’s Max Range set to on its Configuration page? It seems unlikely that this would get changed without your knowlege, but this effectively limits the registration range. If this is the problem, the SM’s AP Eval page will show OutOfRange=1.
the ap’s max range is set to 30 miles, sorry i’m meant to tell you that
From the SM can you turn on the spectrum analyzer? How about from the AP? How does the spectrum look? Let it run for about 5-15 minutes. Over the entire band do you see anything better than -40 (do you have anything in the red)
From the SM, do you see anything else in the AP eval data?
Within the spectrum analyzer from the SM all are from -65 to -75, none in red. I can’t find a spectrum analyzer in the AP html page. The ap eval data page shows None. I did get some info today that might help. In the RF stats pages of the sm, the following:
temperature out of range 4
rssi out of range 138
range cap enforced 0
these values where from about 5 miles from the tower with good line of sight
when sitting 1/2 - 1 miles away the values were
temperature out of range 0
rssi out of range 129
range cap enforced 0
do these mean anything to this problem?
To find the Spectrum Analyzer page on the AP you must first put the AP into SM-mode at the top of the Configuration page.
Ok, thanks Teknix. The spectrum analyzer from the ap is about the same all around -55 to -75, with nothing in the red.
Do as Tech Support suggested and look closely at the SM’s AP-Eval page when you’re 1 and 3 miles out (both registerd and not) and identify the differences. If the AP is listed, but the SM doesn’t register, the data should indicated the reason.