Motorola MC9090 handhelds and 7363 Access Points with Zone Director

[michael_daracz]

I have 4 motorola handheld guns roaming between 6 overlapping 7363 access points with Zone Director 1100. The guns are running a simple wavelink telnet application. They are sitting on a separate open WLAN with no authenticaion but with an MAC ACL. Intermittently, the guns are having problems re-establishing a link to the access point(bars that indicate signal strength go from full to none, and the handheld indicates that it lost connection with the server), even though they are within the range of them. It doesn't happen often but its annoying enough. It usually takes 10 - 20 seconds to re establish a link. What settings should I check? Thank you!

I

[sid_sok]

@Michael Daracz

Hi Michael, from your description it seems like the client is not roaming as quickly as it should. Some assumptions:
1. The scanner are set to operate on one band only, 2.4 or 5 GHz not auto
2. If using 2.4 the scanners are NOT 802.11b only
3. Your deployment has a good overlap (so an signal of no less than -65 dBm everywhere)

Base on those assumption and what you have indicated try the following:
1. Set the wlan to tunnel mode (this is recommended for handheld and phone)
2. Set the BSS min rate to something higher than the default so the scanner will get "out of range" while still able to communicate quite well and when looking for a new AP it should still get a good enough signal on the new AP and connect right away.

With a -65 dBm coverage it's safe to start with a BSS min rate of 12 Mbps. This wil make the AP send out management frames, such as beacon and probe response be sent out at 12 Mbps so the client can not get too far before it get out of range of a 12 Mbps radius of the current AP. Here are the command to set the BSS min rate for the wlan:
ruckus> enable
ruckus# config
ruckus(config)# wlan motoscanner
The WLAN service 'motoscanner' has been created. To save the WLAN service, type 'end' or 'exit'.
ruckus(config-wlan)# bss-minrate 12
The mgmt-tx-rate will be set to the same value as bss-minrate.
The command was executed successfully. To save the changes, type 'end' or 'exit'.
ruckus(config-wlan)# end
The WLAN service 'motoscanner' has been updated and saved.
Your changes have been saved.
ruckus(config)# end
Your changes have been saved.
ruckus#

[r0nnieb]

jumping into the thread.... :)

I have exactly the same issue (and the very same application is being used here also) [Michael.. could you confirm your encryption settings that you are using.. i.e. WPA or WPA2 for example?]

Currently tunnelled wlan with wpa/tkip is failing at one of our sites (the other site is setup identically without the random drop outs.
It appears that some of the devices will work fine when being used but when idle for x amount of time (CAM mode on and CPU performance activated) the devices stop passing IP traffic but both the unit and the zone director say they are connected with an IP address still visible but with failed pings. if you deleted the device from the monitor - currently active clients page the device reconnects instantly and allows in this case the telnet session to work (and pings!)

I will try and update the wlan profile to match the above post and report my findings tomorrow....

[Eddie_Felmer]

I have another customer reporting similar issue with Windows CE Mobile 6.5 / Motorola MC9190. It seems when roaming between AP’s as they frequently do it upsets a Telnet connection to a server located externally through the internet. I have to renew their IP to get them communicating again although the ZD thinks they are still connected with excellent signal strength.

They are running latest 9.7 LCS and were already tunnelling with ofdm-only enabled. I have asked them to set bss-min rate to 12 to see if that helps and they were also going to test smart roam.

[jamison_clark]

Eddie,
What was your resolution to this issue? I am currently experiencing the same.

I have another customer reporting similar issue with Windows CE Mobile 6.5 / Motorola MC9190. It seems when roaming between AP’s as they frequently do it upsets a Telnet connection to a server located externally through the internet. I have to renew their IP to get them communicating again although the ZD thinks they are still connected with excellent signal strength.

They are running latest 9.7 LCS and were already tunnelling with ofdm-only enabled. I have asked them to set bss-min rate to 12 to see if that helps and they were also going to test smart roam.

[michael_daracz]

@Sid Sok

First two assumptions are correct

I have updated the BSS and I will get back in 2 days.