What is the difference between a heartbeat lost, AP disconnected, and AP connected?

[bj_rnjensen]

What is the difference between a heartbeat lost, AP disconnected, and AP connected? I receive each of these individually on different AP's with no other alerts received.  For instance, I have one AP that about 10 times a day tells me the heartbeats are lost.  Shouldn't I also receive an "AP disconnected" message with that?  When it gets reconnected shouldn't I receive an "AP connected" message? 

On top of that I receive messages from AP's every once in a while that say, "AP disconnected" and then I'll never receive a "connected" message when I know it's back up.  Also, at my own house the power went out and I received only an "AP connected" message when the power was restored.  No "heartbeat lost" or "AP disconnected."

The alert rules are the same for EVERY AP especially as I don't see a way to individualize the alerts per zone, per user, per anything.  Does anybody have an answer to these oddities?

Thank you.

[michael_brado]

We help answer some of your questions in this article:

https://support.ruckuswireless.com/answers/000001658

APs send heartbeats to the ZD, which keeps track.

Often due to network congestion, APs remote from the ZD over WAN links,
or possibly PoE issues, you may see 'lost heartbeat' reported, traps to SNMP.

If the outage lasts 20 minutes, a 'lost contact' email/alert gets sent.  See notes
in the ZD 9.9 User Guide.

https://ruckus-support.s3.amazonaws.com/private/documents/572/ZoneDirector%209.9%20User%20Guide%20-%...

Customizing Email Alarms that ZoneDirector Sends
Using the Alarm Event section of the  Configure > Alarm Settings page, you can
choose which types of events will trigger ZoneDirector to send an email notification.
1 Click Alarm Event to select/deselect all alarm types.
2 Select or deselect those for which you want or don’t want to receive emails.
3 Click Apply to save your changes.
When any of the selected events occur, ZoneDirector sends an email notification to
the email address that you specified in the Email Notificationsection.

NOTE:
With the exception of the Lost contact with AP event, ZoneDirector only
sends one email alarm notification for each event. If the same event happens again,
no alarm will be sent until you clear the alarm on the Monitor> All Alarmspage.

On the other hand, ZoneDirector sends a new alarm notification each time the
Lost contact with AP event occurs.

[bj_rnjensen]

Hello sir and thanks for the reply.  Unfortunately this issue, as shown in the category it was created in, is in regards to a vSCG or vSZ, not a Zonedirector.  Thanks anyway.

[michael_brado]

Touche Bjorn, though my admin view is different.  Checking current engineering docs, from SCG/vSCG/SZ code 3.0 and on, default heartbeat/config/status intervals applied to APs are
as follows:

Heartbeat - 30 seconds
Configuration - 300 seconds
Mesh status - 300 seconds
AP status - 900 seconds, and after configuration is applied
Client status - 900 seconds
Rogue - Background Scan interval
(only report new rogue or update rogue no longer seen to SCG/vSCG/SZ)

and/but still check network connectivity/latency between APs to them,
particularly if only certain APs are triggering your alerts.  Swap cables
or switch ports, etc if possible to rule out L1/L2.

[bj_rnjensen]

Hi again and thanks for the effort in trying to help me.  I truly mean it.  However, the answer given doesn't explain why I would receive one message and not the other.  In fact, it only serves to prove my question as to why I DON'T receive all messages.

For instance, if an AP dropped off you would expect to receive the heartbeat message after 30 seconds.  THEN if it is still off for 900 seconds I should receive the AP status message that it is disconnected.  THEN I should receive the message it has reconnected. 

This is not the case and therein lies the question.  Why do I only receive one of these messages, whether heartbeat, connected, or disconnected when I should receive all three if an AP has been down for over 900 seconds and then comes back up again?

As for the fact that it's specific AP's, the one I mentioned where it gives the heartbeat lost message is a single AP at a site.  For all I know it IS just disconnecting for just 30 seconds at a time, but shouldn't the other sites also give me that message?  Including my home network with 2 R700's?  If the power goes out I should receive the heartbeat message first, followed by the AP status message.

I really would love to figure out why this is happening.  I would also LOVE Ruckus to give us more granular control over thresholds as well as allow us to give individual users the ability to tailor events for the zones that they are administrating.  Right now it's all global and there is only one email address the alerts can be sent to.

Thanks again.