Not sure if anyone is having the kind of experience am having with the epmp 2000 access points, they work very well for a while then suddenly the device ethernet freezes and we have to restart I have been privilege to be at a client’s place when it happened I logged into the AP and it was looking good but not passing traffic on the ethernet port but when I restarted it came back up and we went on normal then works for a while then it happens again I’ve taken it up with support but no one has been able to be of help
Seems the 2000’s always had really finnicky Ethernet (and 3000L was worse yet). We had this a lot back in the day with 2000 and usually it was resolved by replacing cables/ends/surge suppressors. The 2000’s just seem really finnicky.
Not really a great solution but the watchdog function on the radios can be set to just reset the ethernet port which (we don’t use it anymore) was less down time than having the watchdog reboot the radio.
Unfortunately, the Watchdog isn’t really configurable in too useful a way - it’s only in 1 minute intervals, so you get to choose between 1 or 2 or 3 of 4 minutes of downtime.
Watchdogs in other products are configurable by seconds, and most of them are configurable differently between ‘successful’ and ‘unsuccessful’ – so we have the flexibility to tell the radios to ping every 30 (or 60 or 10 or whatever) seconds when it’s successful, and then when there’s a failure detected, to ping every 1 second for 10 pings (or whatever). That way, we can figure out a programming where there are no false positives, and yet it’ll detect a down interface very quickly.
Unfortunately with Cambium, we’re basically setting them to 3 minutes, which is 3 consecutive failures - which usually eliminated false positives, BUT then has up to 4 minutes of downtime before resetting.
+1 to cables/ss/cabke ends
This has been 98% of any ethernet lockup issues we have had with the 3000/3000L’s, had a 1000-lite do this too but that was a blown ethernet port.
Are you using shielded cables? If so, make sure you do not have any ground loops or you can get very, very weird issues, especially if you have a ground strap from the radio to the tower but no dedicated tower bonding cable (not a good idea to rely on the tower as a ground).
Are you on/near an FM transmitter tower? Not usually a major issue but you could be experiencing issues from this if true.
Has anyone actually looked at the cable ends and the sockets the plug into? If the contacts are not shiny then use a Q-tip ans some electro-motive (this one is safe for this use, others may be too but not tested) and wipe the contacts clean.
Do you have smart speed enabled? If so, disable it. To be honest, this is a mixed bag and others will disagree with me on this, but it is our experience that it is not compatible with all capable devices and has created so many issues that it is now SOP for us to disable it.
If your switch has low-power ethernet functions then try disabling that too. This function is to save power on links that do not need full power, but some devices do not take kindly (epmp1000/3000L) to going from low power to high power modes. Disabling low-power mode will not harm your equipment in any way nor does it affect POE functions just ethernet transmit power levels, so it is worth exploring.
Thanks for taking time out to put all this together funny enough I’ve checked all those things and then the issue stops on its own after a while so what I did was to use wifi enabled socket, ones I get the alert that the AP is out I connect and check if it’s true because there are times I’ve had false alarms once I confirm I can remotely power down the device then power it back up after a few minutes sometimes it works for a while and stop again then I have to repeat the process but there are times it will not happen again for months, another thing is that this devices are reachable thru the wireless it’s only the Ethernet that seem to go down on the switch you can still see activities except that it will not pass traffic, it’s not quite and enjoyable experience but coping with it.
Tracking down the exact cause of this particular issue is going to make a new bald spot, so please be patient and diligent by rechecking and only doing one change at a time. It is amazing what little thing can cause such big headaches and even more confusing when you realize that yes you did check it but not when asked about a particular condition. I know it is frustrating and its very easy to dismiss things as already done.
Are you using a fully managed switch? If not then If possible get a cheap cisco 2960S, (ebay for about 150$ usd) these are fully manageable and provide great logs of what happened if configured correctly. These are also 12v dc on the inside so if you dont have AC power available then a simple buck converter (300w minimum) will get you running.
If you have a surge suppressor on that ethernet link, remove it and test. Depending on how you are powering the radio, these things can cause issues. I do not suggest to run indefinitely without surge protection but this eliminates a possible point of issue.
Not sure how you are powering the radios, but we use Packetflux’s Gigabit Sync Injector, supplied with both 24v and 48v (dual voltage) and set the jumpers inside to match the requirements of the radio (we lable each port so we dont fubar a 24v radio on 48v!), when an extra surge suppressor is required (top of tower mounted radios) we use UBNT SP-ETH suppressors. We find these ones to be reliable and since they are very cost effective (about 1/2 the cost of Cambiums and about 1/4 of pretty much every other one), when one goes or is causing problems, its not a big deal to swap it.
There is a chance that it is either the switch or the AP that is damaged (near field ESDs do take out equipment too and you may not ever see or hear the discharge!). For the switch, try moving to another port, at least 4 ports away. Most switches use chips that share controllers on 4 ports, so if in port 1 then move to port 5 or farther. If its the AP, you can set the switch port to only negotiate 10/100 (yes, I hear the groaning) and if the ethernet link still halts then lock the AP to 10/100. This eliminates half of the ethernet issues and provides reasonable service until you can swap/upgrade APs.
Last thing to think about is spanning tree issues. If you have a spanning tree aware switch, any loop can shutdown a port (or just one vlan on a port is PVST is used) and not always the one you think it should be! If you have dual connected clients (two SMs at one site) and you are not using a L3 dual uplink device to combine the two links then the loop will be visible to spanning tree and cause random havoc.