At any rate I got the issue with them rescanning fixed..but now I have to figure out why the power levels are so low. That may require rolling a truck but we'll see if anyone still drops off as often now.
How did the ap aval look in the sm's with low power level?
Here’s two different SM’s on two different AP’s with eval data.
Current entry index: 1
Index: 0 Frequency: 906.0 MHz ESN: 0xx-xxxxxxxxx
Jitter: 3 RSSI: 1399 Power Level: -72 Beacon Count: 19 BRcvW: 0 DFS: 0 FEC: 0
Type: Multipoint Avail: 1 Age: 0 Lockout: 0 RegFail 0 Range: 0 feet TxBER: 0 EBcast: 0
Session Count: 0 NoLUIDS: 0 OutOfRange: 0 AuthFail: 0 EncryptFail: 0 Rescan Req: 0
FrameNumber: 1488 SectorID: 3 Color Code: 64 BeaconVersion: 1 SectorUserCount: 16
Frequency: 9060 NumULHalfSlots: 14 NumDLHalfSlots: 34 NumULContSlots: 0
Index: 1 Frequency: 915.0 MHz ESN: 0a-00-xxxxx
Jitter: 4 RSSI: 1470 Power Level: -67 Beacon Count: 14 BRcvW: 0 DFS: 0 FEC: 0
Type: Multipoint Avail: 1 Age: 0 Lockout: 0 RegFail 0 Range: 7644 feet TxBER: 0 EBcast: 0
Session Count: 1 NoLUIDS: 0 OutOfRange: 0 AuthFail: 0 EncryptFail: 0 Rescan Req: 0
FrameNumber: 1709 SectorID: 4 Color Code: 65 BeaconVersion: 1 SectorUserCount: 1
Frequency: 9150 NumULHalfSlots: 14 NumDLHalfSlots: 34 NumULContSlots: 0
And…
Current entry index: 1
Index: 0 Frequency: 924.0 MHz ESN:
Jitter: 5 RSSI: 1598 Power Level: -62 Beacon Count: 16 BRcvW: 0 DFS: 0 FEC: 0
Type: Multipoint Avail: 0 Age: 7 Lockout: 0 RegFail 0 Range: 0 feet TxBER: 0 EBcast: 0
Session Count: 0 NoLUIDS: 0 OutOfRange: 0 AuthFail: 0 EncryptFail: 0 Rescan Req: 0
FrameNumber: 1498 SectorID: 2 Color Code: 66 BeaconVersion: 1 SectorUserCount: 2
Frequency: 9240 NumULHalfSlots: 14 NumDLHalfSlots: 34 NumULContSlots: 0
Index: 1 Frequency: 906.0 MHz ESN:
Jitter: 3 RSSI: 1480 Power Level: -67 Beacon Count: 19 BRcvW: 0 DFS: 0 FEC: 0
Type: Multipoint Avail: 1 Age: 0 Lockout: 0 RegFail 0 Range: 7399 feet TxBER: 0 EBcast: 0
Session Count: 1 NoLUIDS: 0 OutOfRange: 0 AuthFail: 0 EncryptFail: 0 Rescan Req: 0
FrameNumber: 1639 SectorID: 3 Color Code: 64 BeaconVersion: 1 SectorUserCount: 0
Frequency: 9060 NumULHalfSlots: 14 NumDLHalfSlots: 34 NumULContSlots: 0
The confusing part is some of my shots are so close together that it’s hard to tell which way to go onto what AP. I’ve been trying to judge it by lowest jitter and highest RSSI if possible but Jitter being more important as long as RSSI is 1300+
I’m assuming thats the way to go?
Also considering going with 7.3.6 - I’ll hafta try it sometime. Thanks again you two~ hopefully the power levels will fix themselves.
There is a big difference in the two
#1 should be on CC 65
#2 should be on CC 66
How do you know this? By power level?
On a good note - not ONE of my customers has gone down in the last 2 hours (It wasn’t prevalent beforehand but usually one or two people per hour would go down for about 21 seconds.)
I’m so happy I could dance with all of you.
While we’re on the subject of upgrading to 7.3.6…
I have one AP set aside in my cluster (its pointed in a direction that everyone has DSL/Cable and we don’t really market a whole lot in that area purposefully)…and it’s set to an SM that I use for testing purposes.
If I was to upgrade that single AP with the only SM on it both to 7.3.6 would it conflict with my other 5 AP’s that are 7.2.9? I would think it shouldn’t but hell…who knows.
As a rule, all APs the same in every way except freq and color code.
Vary at your own risk 
Bah! Okay thanks =)
How do you know this? By power level?
The Rssi is a good tool. But when you check for your noise floor and it is just for example -68 then your -67 would work but not well so if you have an Ap were it can register at -62 this would work much better. We have found if you are at least -3 under the noise floor it works very good
Good to know. I still don’t understand why my RSSI is even higher than before (now that the antennas aren’t pointed at the ground - the person who set up the access points before I came onboard had them set to an 8 degree down tilt…lol). I’m assuming that this may cause some kind of power level difference but I would’ve thought with the RSSI being higher than ever that the power level wouldn’t be at -5 to -10 dbm more (or less however you want to look at it - we went from -65 to -75 on most customers to -70 to -80 dbm on most people.) Surprisingly the SM’s are staying registered even better than before except when it rained last night from Midnight to 2am pretty much everyone went down. It was a very hard rain so I’m assuming it made the dbm that much worse which dropped the signal, because everyone was off and on for those 2 hours.
Well if I understand you correct you went from -65 to -75? if that’s correct you lost -10 of signal you didn’t gain. the lower the negative number the better.
yes clueless is correct… you actually lost 10db of signal… that is an extremely significant level of power…
also be aware that it is recommended that you stay above -80… so that mean -79,-78,-76, et…
I understand that…the way I worded it may have thrown it off.
I completely understand that I lost the signal…what I don’t understand is why.
What factors could cause that? I’ve tried re-aligning some of our antennas now and even then we can’t get anything above -74 over 4-5miles. Everyone closer is higher but some of our shots that were -65, etc. are now -78. I try re-aligning their antenna and it shows a higher RSSI but a much lower power level.
I don’t get it?
Did you do an "Ap aval, to see if they should be on a totally different Ap since the Ap relocation?
Yep - and relocated like 3 customers. The rest are on the right AP. Also implemented color coding just to be sure.
Can you post the Ap aval data on a couple of the Sm you are having trouble with?
Current entry index: 1
*********************************************
Index: 0 Frequency: 906.0 MHz ESN:
Jitter: 7 RSSI: 1292 Power Level: -78 Beacon Count: 6 BRcvW: 0 DFS: 0 FEC: 0
Type: Multipoint Avail: 1 Age: 0 Lockout: 0 RegFail 0 Range: 0 feet TxBER: 0 EBcast: 0
Session Count: 0 NoLUIDS: 0 OutOfRange: 0 AuthFail: 0 EncryptFail: 0 Rescan Req: 0
FrameNumber: 1041 SectorID: 3 Color Code: 4 BeaconVersion: 1 SectorUserCount: 15
Frequency: 9060 NumULHalfSlots: 14 NumDLHalfSlots: 34 NumULContSlots: 0
*********************************************
Index: 1 Frequency: 915.0 MHz ESN:
Jitter: 3 RSSI: 1373 Power Level: -74 Beacon Count: 15 BRcvW: 0 DFS: 0 FEC: 0
Type: Multipoint Avail: 1 Age: 0 Lockout: 0 RegFail 155 Range: 11515 feet TxBER: 0 EBcast: 0
Session Count: 6 NoLUIDS: 0 OutOfRange: 0 AuthFail: 0 EncryptFail: 0 Rescan Req: 0
FrameNumber: 1357 SectorID: 4 Color Code: 3 BeaconVersion: 1 SectorUserCount: 0
Frequency: 9150 NumULHalfSlots: 14 NumDLHalfSlots: 34 NumULContSlots: 0
That's the ap eval from one of the SMs...what's with all the regfails? It seems like everytime I reboot one of my AP's atleast one person fails to register and I have to reboot multiple times to get everyone to re-register.
Current entry index: 0
*********************************************
Index: 0 Frequency: 915.0 MHz ESN:
Jitter: 3 RSSI: 1422 Power Level: -78 Beacon Count: 15 BRcvW: 0 DFS: 0 FEC: 0
Type: Multipoint Avail: 1 Age: 0 Lockout: 0 RegFail 10 Range: 16121 feet TxBER: 0 EBcast: 0
Session Count: 2 NoLUIDS: 0 OutOfRange: 0 AuthFail: 0 EncryptFail: 0 Rescan Req: 0
FrameNumber: 2046 SectorID: 4 Color Code: 3 BeaconVersion: 1 SectorUserCount: 7
Frequency: 9150 NumULHalfSlots: 14 NumDLHalfSlots: 34 NumULContSlots: 0
That's another example. There are plenty of examples but those are two of them with fairly decent RSSI.
When people don't register I usually see this in the AP sessions page:
LUID: 012 : MAC: State: IDLE
Session Timeout: 0, AirDelay 186 (approximately 5.18 miles (27342 feet))
Session Count: 0, Reg Count 5, Re-Reg Count 2
RSSI (Avg/Last): 0/0 Jitter (Avg/Last): 0/0 Power Level (Avg/Last): -107/-107
DnRate(D): 20000 DnLimit(D): 500000 UpRate(D): 20000 UpLimit(D): 500000 (kbit)
LoUpCIR(D): 0 LoDnCIR(D): 0 (kbps)
Rate : VC 28 Rate 1X/1X
Well, That is ugly. I wouldn’t even connect a customer at that level. I don’t know anything about 900 But… Jerry does.
If I were just guessing you may need a larger antenna at the customers location, relocate the sm, rasie the sm, With the recent Ap relocation there is just no telling. The down tilt may have been needed.
Well it’s still got a downtilt of 1-2 degrees but before it was 7-8 degrees. I wouldn’t have figured it would be -THAT- huge? Before we were having distance problems and we were kind of hoping this would fix it. As we really couldn’t get past 10-12 miles before even with clear LOS.
We’re using a 17dbi antenna on both of those fyi - and they aren’t in the middle of a bunch of trees. There are trees but not like a whole forest or pines, etc.
Also - wtf? I was pinging around my network getting 15-50ms per SM and one of my customers has 800MS+ ping. I check it out and he’s hogging some bandwidth so I rebooted his SM to drop off his torrent connections in the mean time (I know he’s at work at the moment - we do one of his businesses as well) and it brought up one of the SM’s that was having the regfail problem. Wtf? By luck maybe?
What do you guys have your Transmitter Output Power on the SM’s/AP’s set at?