Wireless Issues, Netbooks/Ruckus/NPS

[jamiehill1231]

Hello,

 

we have been having problems with netbooks logging in. We have a set of 30 netbooks which connects to our Ruckus 7372 APs which have one in each classroom and the classrooms are next to each other this should allow it to roam into different aps. They are connecting using a radius ssid which authenticates the nps server on the domain.

 

The problem we have been having is it take about an half a hour to a hour for them all to login. User profiles are just folder redirection so shouldn't take long for them to login in.

 

I will be staying late one night to have a look at the problem in more detail, just wondering if anyone has had issues the same or anyone could give me some pointers on what i can try to sort the problem.

 

Thanks in advance

[Net-Ctrl]

Hello,

 

We have had a customer recently with a similar problem and we may be able to help, but first can you answer some questions to help us point you in the right direction:

 

How many APs are you running?

How many APs are in the area you're experiencing problems with? - are there also APs in rooms directly above/below this area?

What types of wireless cards are in your netbooks?

[jamiehill1231]

Hello Net-Ctrl,

 

Thanks for getting back to me

 

We have 25 across the site, it doesnt matter where you take the netbooks, we still have the same problem.

The building is a single floor and rooms are next to each other. It a quite a new build so not old thick walls...

 

I have check we have intels and ralinks in them...

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[localzuk]

How long do they take to log in if you log just one in, and if you log in via a cabled network connection?

[Net-Ctrl]

Have a go at the below..

 

The settings in points 1 – 4 can be changed in the Default AP Group (or any AP Group that contains all AP’s). The setting in point 5 can be changed in “Configure”, “Services” then the “Band Balancing” section.

 

1)Lower the TX power for all APs on both the 2.4 and 5ghz to half their TX power (-3db). – Because you have an AP in every you can afford to lower the transmit power of each AP to reduce interference they have with each other.

 

2)Ensure that channels 1, 5, 9 and 13 are the channels in use on 2.4ghz radio and all channels are available on the 5ghz. – default channels on the 2.4ghz radio are 1, 6 and 11. Using 1, 5, 9 and 13 will give your AP’s an extra channel to make use of.

 

3)Make sure 20MHz is on 2.4GHz and use 40MHz for 5ghz. – As a lot of channels are available on the 5ghz radio, you can essentially combine the channel width to make a higher possible data rate. (Using this will mean less available channels on the 5ghz range, but there is so many available on the 5ghz radio even combining them to be 40MHz wide will still leave you with 9 non-overlapping channels)

 

4)Change ChannelFly to turn off after APs uptime is 30 minutes – The AP’s will use the 30mins to select their best channel based on what is being used around them. After this the ChannelFly feature will be turned off.

 

5) Lower the percentage of client on the 2.4ghz radio to 15% (Configure/Services/Band Balancing) – Providing your clients are 5GHz capable, this feature will effectively force more clients onto the 5GHz range therefore making use of the cleaner spectrum and higher data rates.

 

If there are particular Aps that still require full transmit power for better signal coverage, then put these APs in a separate AP group and modify the setting accordingly.

 

Good luck with it all, I hope some of this helps

[stevenlong1985]

also: on the netbooks. make sure the "offline files" in the sync center is disabled

[m25man]

The OP refers to "Netbooks" as such what is the client NIC capable of?

 

I've rarely seen a cheap netbook with a wireless NIC capable of more than 54g which in real throughput isn't much more than 30mbps over shared medium with 30 laptops !

 

Maybe what you are seeing is all the clients are capable of?

 

I fitted an Intel AC card in my Samsung NC10 and added some antennas taken from a scrapper it flies now with 3x3 MIMO ;D

[leeroye]

I have recently experienced the exact same issue. We have over 40 AP's in our building, some are R700's the rest are 7982 zoneflex. I had the exact same issue with some brand new HP laptops. They would connect to the 7982's fine, but as soon as they were connected to an R700 AP the lapotps would take an age to log in and often fail altogether. The Zone director would show authentication errors for these devices even though the Key was correct.

 

In the end i disabled the 5ghz range on the R700's and i have not had an issue since.