Meru Firmware

[witch]

I have been having some issues with my Meru network - computers taking 25 minutes to log on, losing the network, all sorts of nonsense and I have been advised to upgrade the firmware on the controller as a starting point.

We do not have support and another geek of my acquaintance has told me that he has been to two schools who tried it and bricked the controller - they got a new controller from Meru but that isn't an option for us.

Can anyone advise how to upgrade firmware safely?

[psydii]

This isn't much help, but I've always let Meru Remote Support drive when we've done it, and for one upgrade they sent an engineer to site as the risk on that one was sufficient that they wanted a trained bod on site in case it went sideways. It didn't.

 

What version are you running, on what controller and how much storage does it have?

[twin--turbo]

PM Mark Howell. View Profile: mhowell - EduGeek.net

 

I have done a few UG's on the firmware and not had any problems. You should be able to register on the support site in order to download the

 

Rob

[witch]

As I said-we have no support so can get no help from support engineers!

I will look and see what it is we have

[twin--turbo]

I don't think you need a contract to get the FW.

 

 

Is the problem a new one?

 

Anything changed?

 

Rob

[CyberNerd]

I've not done this myself - we have a support contract. However I think the process is basically download the latest firmware, log in on the CLI (ssh using putty), do a backup (copy running-config X where X=destination), copy firmware from FTP site to local, then issue "upgrade controller X" where X= firmware version.

It should then upgrade the AP's automatically.

Sorry if this is a bit vague, like I said I've never done it myself. I strongly suggest you either purchase a support contract, or perhaps contact a specialist Meru engineer ( switchshop are very good Switchshop : independent specialist provider of IT network equipment solutions ) and see if they can provide a quote to do the upgrade. They may be able to do it remotely.

[twin--turbo]

As I said speek to Mark as a first port of call, he will probably get Paul to drop you a line..

 

and yes the upgrade is more or less as CyNd says but there are some gotchas ( drive space can be one ).

 

Rob

[witch]

I know what I should do - I am just a bit worried after hearing about the two bricked controllers locally.

I would love a support contract but there is no point telling me to get one - it isn't going to happen..

I'll speak to Mark, thanks @twin-turbo

 

I have netbooks and whilst they have never been fast, they are now taking 20 mins for a classload to log on. No local interference, WAPs restarted and OK, so the controller is my last resort

Edited February 15, 2013 by witch

[twin--turbo]

I know what I should do - I am just a bit worried after hearing about the two bricked controllers locally.

I would love a support contract but there is no point telling me to get one - it isn't going to happen..

I'll speak to Mark, thanks @twin-turbo

 

I have netbooks and whilst they have never been fast, they are now taking 20 mins for a classload to log on. No local interference, WAPs restarted and OK, so the controller is my last resort

 

How big are the user profiles?

 

Rob

[witch]

Very small. We get a lot of profile corruption though but I can't see how that would be related

[twin--turbo]

Can you generate 20 clean test users , and see if the logins are good.

 

We had a similar issue with logins on FAT laptops ( brand new ones ) over the wireless and it turned out to be a Duff Image on the laptop taht was the primary cause.

 

Rob

[psydii]

Are they running W7? I noticed a deterioration in performance following the Dec/Jan Windows updates.

 

Also just check that you don't have UDP Broadcast or Multicast enabled on the controller unnecessarily.

 

On Profile corruption, we were seeing a lot of this in the first few months of our Windows 7 deployment. Installing various HotFixes reduced occurrences dramatically. This post has a few links to them.

[witch]

It isn't a duff image as we have had the netbooks for a year now and they have been fine.I would like to generate some test users but that would take a lot of time and I just don't have it. Might have to though

Broadcast etc isnt enabled.

Thanks for the profile issue info-it is driving me nuts

[twin--turbo]

It isn't a duff image as we have had the netbooks for a year now and they have been fine.I would like to generate some test users but that would take a lot of time and I just don't have it. Might have to though

Broadcast etc isnt enabled.

Thanks for the profile issue info-it is driving me nuts

 

Should only take 10 mines to create 20 copies of a clean new user.

 

Log them in as close together as possible and time it.

 

Rob

[psydii]

Perhaps you could get a member of SMT to prioritise troubleshooting this matter over other tasks? I'd definitely advocate doing the clean user test as Rob is suggesting...

 

When we were testing we'd log the clean users on to the laptops then log them off to ensure the profile was full built and sync'd back to the server. Then we'd rotate the laptops and log the users back on ensuring we used a different laptop for each user in order to avoid seeing benefit from cached roaming profiles.

 

Cookies are something to look out for... if they (or other high volume, small size) files are getting loaded across wireless it destroys your performance.

 

Eventually after all the hotfixes and testing we opted to nuke all the existing profiles, since too many were partially corrupted.