H510 Standalone Constantly Rebooting

[erik_garcia_ctm]

Hi, I have a few H510's that are running in standalone mode. Most of them reboot themselves every few days or so and such have not been a problem. I have a new unit though that is restarting several times a day. I set up a syslog server and set the logging to the highest level to try and capture why the AP is rebooting but it just restarts without logging any error. I have reset the unit to factory and tried re-flashing the latest firmware but the problem persists.

Does anyone have an idea what I can do to try to see why the AP is restarting?

Thank you,

Erik

[dan_kern]

I would suspect a bad Wall Wart.  Try replacing it with one of the same voltage, but higher amperage as some of these wall wart power supplies are prone to just overheat and reboot the device they are powering when they are stressed or heated up.  

Case in point, my next door neighbor called me complaining of losing the internet every 15 minutes to an hour beginning last Friday. I went over and checked the Modem Log to verify that indeed it was rebooting due to Power Resets that HE Was NOT doing himself.  The Modem Power Wall Wart along with all of his other devices like switches, HDHomeRun 4 Channel Tuner, Obi Phone box, etc were all being powered by a single UPS, and it had not gone into fault mode or shutdown in nearly 5 months due to AC Power issues.  The Modem required and originally came with a 12V - 0.75 Amp wall wart which worked for almost 5 years, but last year it had died and was replaced with a little larger cheap third party non-OEM 12V - 1.0 Amp Wall Wart Power Supply device.  It worked flawlessly until Friday when it started rebooting the modem. I suspect it was due to overheating because the wall wart power supply was unusually warm to the touch.  I replaced it with a 12V - 4.0 Amp power supply temporarily and ordered a new 12V - 2.0 Amp wall wart to give some extra breathing room between demand and availability of power.  Since replacing the Wall Wart Power Supply, there have been NO Reboots, and the internet has worked flawlessly for over 5 days now.  

If you are powering your Access Point with POE power from individual Wall Warts or even a POE Switch, check the output power Amperage of the Power Supply to insure you have some breathing room between available amperage and actual amperage in use by all of your POE Devices that are powered by the POE Switch or other POE Power Supplies your using.  
Please let us know what you find and your eventual resolution to this issue.
Good Luck!  

[erik_garcia_ctm]

Hi Dan,

I should have added more details in the first post. These are being powered by a Cisco 3750-E switch and it shows only 138 out of 800 watts of POE power used at the moment. So I don't think it is a power issue in this case. All the other POE devices on that switch are running fine. I also wanted to rule out the wiring run in the building so I am currently bench testing this unit with only a 5 foot CAT6 patch cable directly to the switch but it is still restarting.

Thanks for your reply,

Erik

[dan_kern]

Thanks for the additional information.  In that case, I would try to run the Access Point ONLY on a Wall Wart power supply that you have good confidence in that is of adequate Amperage as required by the device, and simply plug the NON-POE ethernet line into the AP Data Port and a Switch to see if it continues to reboot.  Also, if there is more than one Data Line Input Jack available on the AP, (Sorry, I'm not intimately familiar with your AP, but my 500's have a couple of Ports I can use to connect to switches, One POE and one Non POE If I remember correctly), you may want to try to disable the extra jacks and test them one at a time to see if there is a particular jack port that is causing your issue.  (A firmware bug may be the cause if this is the case)

There is a remote possibility that there is too much electrical noise on the POE data line that in some way may be triggering a reboot, but only further testing and process of elimination will prove that one way or another.  Perhaps if you have one available to you, you might try putting a scope on the power supply lines to see if it shows any excessive noise coming into the AP.  The unit may be super sensitive and need to have very clean power to work reliably. In my personal home, I am running four 500 units, 2 on POE and 2 on wall warts as part of a 4 AP Mesh system, and I have no rebooting problems at all. 

Also, simply connecting the AP only to a Wall Wart, NO Cables to any devices, just the AP and Wall Wart running, and simply watch it for a period of time to see if reboots while simply doing nothing.  Sounds crazy, but I've seen some crazy things happen in the last 40+ years of networking fun. 

Honestly, I can't think of anything else other than there may be something overheating in the AP and forcing a reboot. 

I once had a network installation where the ethernet line running down the wall was acting as a big antenna, and certain times of the day and night, something being broadcast in the direction of the building would cause about 10 PC's to just lock up!  After replacing the the local switch, power supply and full ethernet cable run twice without resolving the issues, we ended up putting the ethernet cable into a piece of grounded conduit run from the switch in the office all the way up the wall and back to the phone room backbone switch, and that was the solution to the problem. 

Later we discovered a new TV/Radio Tower had been installed a couple of blocks away, and their broadcast signal at certain times of the day somehow was creating interference only on the one run of ethernet cable that we replaced 3 times.  Putting it into the shielded and grounded conduit fixed the issue.  I know, crazy right?  Anyway, hope this helps.  Good Luck!