topic Re: WiFi Keeps Dropping Connections (R750 WAPs) in Access Points - Indoor and Outdoor

WiFi Keeps Dropping Connections (R750 WAPs)

SomeGuy543 — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 19:49:48 GMT

So I'm pretty new to this all, but to give some background, we've been using Ruckus Wifi access points for our local office network. As a stopgap until we received our Cisco networking equipment, we just used a regular home router, and the setup worked fairly well.

When we migrated to the Cisco network and configured the wireless system to work with it recently, I started noticing some problems. This also coincides with a period of rapid significant growth in users at the office, but I'm having trouble telling if it's due to that or maybe something on our Cisco network that's dropping the connections. At first we only had two APs for our office (which was fine on the old network for many months) and I noticed recently by looking at the data that a few of the connections were listed as "poor", so I added two more APs in to the mix. Now I don't see as many poor connections but I still notice pretty much every device seems to lose its connection to the Wifi network for a little at some point (after which it may reconnect if set to automatically reconnect, but this presents problems of course, especially with video calls). The actual signal strength of the network is good though, pretty much always full bars appearing on each device, and the connection itself, once it's on, is good. It just seems to randomly drop it fairly often.

I've tried taking a look at Logs under Diagnostics on our Unleashed dashboard, but they don't seem to indicate much. I also then went to the Client Troubleshooting section and tried to do a test with the MAC address of a certain computer's Wifi NIC but again it wasn't very helpful in terms of elucidating what's going on with the dropped connections. When the connection actually happens successfully, everything seems to check out on there, otherwise there isn't info on it. When I try to download the log, I get a .tac file that I can't do much with. Any advice on better troubleshooting with these logs?

Here's some information:

- mesh network is enabled

- both 5 GHz and 2.4 Ghz networks are enabled, but they are combined and set to auto

- radio is mostly 802.11ax but some are ac or n, and most have excellent or moderate signal strength

- *something to note is that all of the WAPs have a warning saying "Not enough electricity power is provided to this AP, its capabilities are degraded". But this has always been the case even from the start when we didn't have this problem with dropping connections. The Cisco switches that they are connected to are PoE and in one case we even added a separate PoE injector, but the warning is still there. Could this be part of the problem?

- we have over 35 users here but four APs in a medium sized office should handle that, I believe

- DHCP and all of that is not done on the Ruckus network but handled by the Cisco equipment it is connected to (switches, firewall, etc.)

- we do plan on eventually getting actual Cisco wireless equipment, but until then we want to get this stabilized

- I am considering doing a firmware update later today maybe

From the info I've given here (I can provide more if necessary), would you say I need to be looking at the Ruckus network itself or rather the Cisco network and security equipment behind it rather? Any tips to optimize our Ruckus wifi experience on the dashboard?

Thank you, and any advice is much appreciated.

Re: WiFi Keeps Dropping Connections (R750 WAPs)

Squozen — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 07:59:57 GMT

Your switches are only providing POE, not POE+. Have you enabled 802.11r and 802.11k? Try it on a test SSID and roll it to production if the problem goes away. Also disable the mesh, it’s just another thing to go wrong.

btw, Cisco wireless will have the same problems if you don’t use the correct settings.

Re: WiFi Keeps Dropping Connections (R750 WAPs)

Vineet_nejwala — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:05:02 GMT

Hi @SomeGuy543

1) Lets try first with providing the APs with power mode POE + "at" to get it into full functionality for better performance.

2) The disconnection can be due to co channel interference or adjacent channel interference or both if you have randomly placed the APs. Can you check whats the TX power set on all APs and whats the channel being utilized on 2.4Ghz ? Lets try only non overlapping channel (1,6 and 11).

3) Can you share the AP support log and debug log with us with few client MAC that drop often to have a quick look ?

To grab support log :

Login to Master AP
- Click Access Points on left to display connected APs.
- Click selected AP from those on left side.
- Click "Show System Overview Info" to display AP details
- Find "Save Logs" download.

Debug logs can be downloaded here:

Services > Diagnostics > Save debug info

Best Regards

Vineet

Re: WiFi Keeps Dropping Connections (R750 WAPs)

SomeGuy543 — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 14:48:34 GMT

Hm, I see. PoE+ may be a bit tricky to get done given our layout for now since some cabling would need to be run across the drop tile ceiling. Also, I did enable 802.11r and k on a new test SSID and the problem still persisted. If it's not set to auto-connect to the wifi network, it will just stay dropped off of it, so I'm not sure if that's still a symptom of roaming issues.

Is it worth it to look at load balancing and band balancing too? Background scanning is on currently.

Re: WiFi Keeps Dropping Connections (R750 WAPs)

SomeGuy543 — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 15:04:38 GMT

Hi Vineet,

PoE+ may be tough for us to implement at the moment since the APs are all mounted on the drop ceiling but we don't have the ability to run the 48V power cables over to them for now, if that is what is needed.

As for the TX power, everything is set to Auto (looks like when I inherited this role, nothing was modified from the default on the Ruckus system). For 2.4 GHz, it looks like all the channels are checked... I should have looked at that yeah, so I'll select Override Group Config and choose only the non-adjacent channels.

As for debug info, under Diagnostics and Debug Logs, I see none of that is checked yet. I should just select Access Points and maybe RF Management? And then select the "Debug log per AP's or client's mac address" and fill that in? Before I actually "Save Debug Info"?

Thanks.

Re: WiFi Keeps Dropping Connections (R750 WAPs)

Vineet_nejwala — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 16:24:39 GMT

@SomeGuy543

After changing the channel setting lets enable "RF Management, 802.11, System Management and
Access points' and debug log per Client MAC (adding client MAC). Once you see issue with this client the AP support log and debug should work.

Best Regards

Vineet

Re: WiFi Keeps Dropping Connections (R750 WAPs)

SomeGuy543 — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 13:45:00 GMT

Hm, so oddly enough it seems to have stabilized over the last half day. I haven't noticed any dropping now. I think it is possibly because one of the four APs in our network had an unspecified gateway of 0.0.0.0 instead of the actual one. And because the network was set to mesh, if there is one AP with a bad config, the whole network is affected. After fixing that, there doesn't seem to be dropping. I may be speaking too soon however, so I will let you know if it persists and if that was maybe just a weird coincidence. Because I thought we started experiencing these symptoms before that AP was added into the mix, though I could be wrong...

Thanks for the help so far!

Re: WiFi Keeps Dropping Connections (R750 WAPs)

Vineet_nejwala — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 05:58:05 GMT

@SomeGuy543

Sure, if problem persist we would help further.

Best Regards

Vineet

Re: WiFi Keeps Dropping Connections (R750 WAPs)

SomeGuy543 — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 17:55:09 GMT

So it's been functioning much better over the last week, with minimal dropping. I did remove all but the 1, 6, and 11 channels for 2.4, although I've noticed the vast majority of clients use the 5G anyway. I also administratively enabled PoE+ on the APs via the Cisco switch, so the warning is gone now.

Just out of curiosity and for my knowledge, what exactly is meant by 'auto' for the various settings, like Tx power, channel, etc? I assume this means it just detects and chooses whatever is optimal... so ideally they should be left alone? Or do you recommend manually setting some? For example I was reading about the benefits of lowering transmit power from APs as it can cause interference, drain power and battery for mobile devices, cause distortion, affect proper roaming, and doesn't really increase coverage much. Do you recommend doing this, or just leaving it as is?

Thanks!

Re: WiFi Keeps Dropping Connections (R750 WAPs)

Vineet_nejwala — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 03:03:13 GMT

First of all that sounds great that the network has been stable. For "auto" as the name suggest it will adjust the APs TX power and channel according to the neighbour AP and chose best availability. I would suggest to let it as since this is working great for you.

Best Regards

Vineet

Re: WiFi Keeps Dropping Connections (R750 WAPs)

SomeGuy543 — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 22:06:12 GMT

Hi Vineet,

Sorry for bringing back this topic but it seems we are not totally good yet, if you could perhaps please shed some more light. There is significantly less dropping but it does still happen from time to time, seemingly more on certain hosts than others. Here is some system debug info from around the time of the disconnect, if this is useful (the mac of the host that dropped off is 04:cf:4b:19:18:97):

Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: stamgr_web_auth_update_traffic_counters():Station 04:cf:4b:19:18:97, update raffic counters fail
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: accounting_sta_stop_impl():Accounting for 04:cf:4b:19:18:97 is stopped.
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: stamgr_STA_put():free sta: 0x01f9a878, sta_info: 0x01f8d3d8, MAC: 04:cf:4b:19:18:97
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: stamgr_remove_associated_sta():STA:04:cf:4b:19:18:97, sta_info->flags=0x4184000, sta->del_rc=3, sta->ref_cnt=2, reason=3, del_rc_str station disconnects
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: stamgr_handle_remote_sta_leave():Deleting 04:cf:4b:19:18:97 on VAP 34:20:e3:15:56:9c with reason 3, result 0, roaming 0
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: stamgr_web_auth_update_traffic_counters():Station 04:cf:4b:19:18:97, update raffic counters fail
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: accounting_sta_stop_impl():Accounting for 04:cf:4b:19:18:97 is stopped.
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso APMgr@Ruckus_A: lwapp_get_sta_stats IEEE80211_RUCKUS_GET_STA_STATS=126 ioctl failed
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso kernel: [2242247.549299] wlan: [0:I:ANY] ol_ath_vdev_install_key_send: 3230: macaddr 04:cf:4b:19:18:97
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso kernel: [2242247.549294] wlan: [0:I:ANY] ol_ath_vdev_install_key_send: 3229: Keyix=0 Keylen=16 Keyflags=0 Cipher=0
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso kernel: [2242247.549283] wlan: [0:I:ANY] ol_ath_vdev_install_key_send: 3226: Is_group_key_valid=0 grp_key_idx=0
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: tac_remote_sta_remove():send del sta (04:cf:4b:19:18:97) to remote AP
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: tac_send_remote_sta_delete():send del sta (04:cf:4b:19:18:97) to remote AP with elmt_id=0xb00 radio=1, wlan id=0, reason=768
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: stamgr_remove_associated_sta():STA:04:cf:4b:19:18:97, sta_info->flags=0x4094200, sta->del_rc=0, sta->ref_cnt=2, reason=3, del_rc_str station disconnects
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: handle_deauth():VAP 34:20:e3:15:56:9c- STA 04:cf:4b:19:18:97 deauthenticated
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: ieee802_1x_set_sta_authorized():VAP 34:20:e3:15:56:9c- unauthorizing port for STA 04:cf:4b:19:18:97
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: handle_deauth():VAP 34:20:e3:15:56:9c- deauth frame from 04:cf:4b:19:18:97, reason_code=1
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: ieee802_11_mgmt():VAP 34:20:e3:15:56:9c- received mgmt deauth frame from 04:cf:4b:19:18:97
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: handle_frame():received mgmt frame type from 04:cf:4b:19:18:97 to AP (34:20:e3:15:56:9c)
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: stamgr_get_sta_vlan():STA 04:cf:4b:19:18:97 uses vlan id 1, vap vlan id is 1, vlan pool vlanid is 0, sta_info vlan id is 0, vlan of device policy is 0, vlan of role is 0
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: stamgr_get_sta_vlan():STA 04:cf:4b:19:18:97 uses vlan id 1, vap vlan id is 1, vlan pool vlanid is 0, sta_info vlan id is 0, vlan of device policy is 0, vlan of role is 0
Nov 14 21:35:28 Contoso stamgr: stamgr_handle_remote_ipc():Receive STA(04:cf:4b:19:18:97)'s vlan (1) dhcp-ip(10.1.26.104) lease-time(32400) xid(c1c1f5d4) dhcp-ack(16777216) from AP(34:20:e3:15:56:90)

I'm not sure why it's saying Vlan Id is 1, since the interface that the APs are on is a different VLAN. Or does that Cisco config not transfer over to the APs?

There is a lot more but it doesn't fit on here due to the 20k character limit.

Re: WiFi Keeps Dropping Connections (R750 WAPs)

hakunamatomato — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 22:02:26 GMT

did you find the solution to this rawkus?