Its me again. I am back this time with another problem but working with the ISP and I hopefully have the right info to answer the questions asked.
My ISP installed 2 new towers in the last 2 weeks. After the install we were having issues staying connected. On for 1 hr and off for 5 mins. Found out the system had to be synced. Did that and everything was good. Now the problem is there are about 8 of 14 customers on this AP that are still dropping connection to the tower. Some are staying connected for only a few seconds and some like me now stay connected for about 10 minutes or so. Seemed to have happened after the new towers were added to the network.
After the timing module was installed and the AP’s were synced last Friday, Saturday was good all day. Problem came on Sunday when most of us were connecting on and off.
I will try to give a description of the setup. Main tower- Recieves bandwidth from a backhaul from provider connected to AP’s synced via Powerport. 2 5.2 backhauls providing bandwidth to outer towers. Backhauls providing signal are set to Master. Backhauls recieving signal are set to slave. Both outer towers recieve sync from backhaul and are syncing on the Timing Port. I believe I have this right. A cyclone timing module is providing the sync on the main tower.
Let me know if this is correct. I believe it is. We were kinda wondering if this is correct if possibly a AP was going bad creating noise to knock the lower power level customers off.
I am open to ideas, comments and questions. Need to get this thing fixed .
Thanks in advance.
Is the sync from the BH slaves being carried to the remote AP’s?
Asked another way, how are the remote AP’s getting sync?
-Generate Sync
-Receive Sync on Timing Port
If the AP’s are generating sync, then you need to make cables that carry the sunc from the BH slave RJ11 jack pins 1, 2, 3, 6 to the AP RJ11 jacks and change the AP to "Receive Sync on Timing Port"
If the AP’s are already getting the sync from the BH slave, then the next question is, what are the frequency assignments of each AP (Main towers as well as remote towers.)
The AP’s on the remote are getting sync from the BH Slave on the Timing Ports.
The main tower Freq setup is this in General. Straight south is 924, NE is 906 and NW is 915.
The outer tower is 922 facing N, the West AP I believe was906 and South AP was918. The other tower is not perfect circle every 120 deg. None of those AP are facing my direction at all. That tower sits approx 7 miles SW of the main tower.
Talked to Canopy support last night. He said only one AP can recieve sync formt he BH slave. If there is more than one you need another CMM. He also suggested we check our SM on this AP since the problem now seems to be this AP only. He said possibly a bad firmware flash was causing RF interference as network trafic increased. Kinda made sense since my connection gets worse the later into the day and evening we go untill morning and I stay connected longer intervals.
Thanks
Moto does not support more than one AP off another BH. Two AP’s is non-standard, however if both AP’s status pages indicate they are getting sync from the BH you are probably OK.
I think your problem is channel selection. 900 AP’s within 10 miles of each other are going to hear each other.
You have an AP on the main tower on 924 facing south, and another AP on the remote tower on 922 facing north. These channels overlap and will cause self interference. Might try putting the north facing on 906
Also, 918 will overlap onto 922 and 924. The only channels that do not overlap are 906, 915, and 924. any other combination will cause self interference. You need to move 918 to 915.
Once you get the channels seperated, see how it runs…
Ok since I wasnt sure exactly what to put for info since I have alot of info I didnt put this in. We eliminated that tower from the picture on Monday night when I was there.
This is what we did:
Turned the AP’s into SM’s so they were not transmitting then we turned the Master BH into a Slave so it wasnt sending signal to that tower. All it was doing was scanning for signal. Then I made the call to my wife and a fellow cutomer to see if the problem of dropping every few minutes went away. It didnt. Nothing changed. The problem stayed exactly the same.
According to my ISP our AP is the only one experiencing this issue and its only about 8 of 14 of us. I have talked to my fellow customers when this is happening and it effects us at the exact same time. When one of us is down we all are. The moment it comes back on it does so for all of us.
I have no way to confirm that this is our AP only but my ISP says none of the other AP customers have complained of this issue. I have no way of contacting them as I dont know who they are.
Any more ideas or questions as to what this might be?
Thanks
Wish I would have called before I madethe last post. Looks like the problem may be creeping into the whole network. Outer towers included. I was asked to ask all of you what you think about the idea of RF noise because of the Cat5 cable not being sheilded. There are a total of 4 BH on the tower plus the AP’s and whatever other electrical equipment needed to run the tower. He talked with Motorola engineering today and they seem to think this may be the issue.
Thanks.
Very possible.
Also bad crimps can cause huge problems. A bad crimp causes dropped packets, which causes increased retries, which causes more dropped packets…
Look at each BH and AP Ethernet Stats page and look for errors. If you see an excessive # of errors, you might have either a bad cable or a bad crimp.
Interference on an unshielded cable happens but is usually limited to towers with other high power transmitters such as paging, AM/FM radio, etc. If there are no other very high power transmitter systems.
With that said, my first guess would be a bad crimp.
Hoepfully soon we will know. He said that he is getting someone out from Motorola tech or engineering or something that is going to look at the system. I am crossing my fingers.
He also is overnighting some shielded Cat5. There is also someone esle transimtting from the tower so that could be part of his problem.
Thanks.