Getting reaaally fed up now!

[Dantech]

To say I am cheesed off with my Ruckus wireless system is putting it extremely mildly.

 

Thanks to my last post on Edugeek I made contact with a very nice man with the same name as me from a company called c-p-ltd who were incredibly kind and sent me a Ruckas loan kit of the 1GHz dual band AP's so I could see whether or not they were worth investing in. We had up to then 30 - 10/100 AP's which are zf2942 Ap's. Having tried out the zf7363 1GHz dual band I was blown away by the performance. The max through put we ever measured with the zoneflex was 28mbp/s on the old ones. With a new laptop which was n ready and the only one of two in the entire school(!) I got a throughput speed of 132Mbp/s.

 

we called in some "experts" to review our wired network who said our installer had basically fitted the netgear PoE switches (unmanaged midspan injection of PoE) into a port in a 48 port switch with a 1Gb feed, so in reality the PoE switch would get 1/48th 1Gb max in worst case scenarion and this was divided between four AP's - then you divide it by the clients... you get the picture!

 

So I bought 7 of the new AP's from C-p-ltd and they were here within two days and I spent last half term installing them. It has made a more reliable connection in our languages area, but because they are not n capable not that much of a difference yet. We still have problems getting 15 to login.

 

Do I really have to replace every laptop before I see any real improvement?

 

Mark:confused:

[featured_spectre]

depends on the laptop...Acers are notoriously rubbish at wireless (from personal experience)...toshiba's would be good to go with and work reliably with ruckus.

[Dantech]

Thanks for the reply Nephilim (interesting choice of name that!)

 

I have really gone off Acers and do not buy any now. Our problem is most fo the laptops we struggle to connect with are 5 years old - yet I get blamed for it not working! The language ones work better now that we updated the realtek drivers to the latest. They are all HP 550's and about three years old now. It's just that I cannot get more than 15 laptops to login in one teaching room - but the AP is the other side of a wall. every where the signal is excellent but logging in seems to be problematic and we do not use roaming profiles. We delete local profiles once a term to avoid unneccesary login delays.

[featured_spectre]

thanks for the name comment

 

The 5 year old laptops will be an issue, but not much of one. They will most likely be working to a B/G standard, which will make the AP go to that standard unless you got the dual band ones (in which case that wont matter).

 

As for the laptops not logging in, have you checked the event logs on the dashboard on the zone director as well as the event viewer on the laptops?

[ZeroHour]

Warning with the Toshiba's I have seen a model we got as a prize result have possibly the worst wifi ever, it basically was useless and LOTS were complaining about it.

[witch]

I have a ruckus wireless system and some of my laptops are old Dell 505s - they connect fine - even in a classroom with 16 netbooks logged on to the same AP. Obviously they are slower but you would expect that.

I also have 4 Tosh Sat Pros which connect reliably as well.

[dhicks]

we called in some "experts" to review our wired network who said our installer had basically fitted the netgear PoE switches (unmanaged midspan injection of PoE) into a port in a 48 port switch with a 1Gb feed, so in reality the PoE switch would get 1/48th 1Gb max in worst case scenarion and this was divided between four AP's - then you divide it by the clients... you get the picture!

 

Those are PoE switches - what you maybe need is a proper PoE injector midspan, which simply adds PoE to individual network connections. You would plug each port you wanted to enable PoE on from your main 48-port switch to the midspan, and then from the midspan out to the PoE device. Each device would, at worst, get 1/48th of the available bandwidth, not 1/48th between all PoE devices, although in practice I doubt the throughput of your switch is actually a problem.

[Brpilot99]

See if you can identify what channel is causing the problem .. In one of my schools we had all sorts of problems until I found that channel 6 for some reason didn't work in a section of the the school ... I used Inssider 2 to log the ch6 signal and found that there were lots of dropouts etc ... I avoid channel 6 in that part of the school and all is well now ... What's causing the dropouts I don't know .. but in that particular school they cannot even get a mobile signal in parts of it ....

[BHMS]

If your laptops support 802.11a you can stick them on the 5Ghz a/n band. I found this had better performance for my laptop suite as our 7363 Ruckus was placed in the same room. At 2.4Ghz they were syncing about 24-36mbit while the other half were deciding to connect an an AP further away because of all the wireless traffic I guess. Now I have them all connecting at 54mbit in the 5Ghz band, it's noticeably faster and with less connection problems.

[Dantech]

Thanks for that tip. I did not even think this would make a difference. I will investigate this.

[ronnoco]

Hi,

 

What is the location of these AP's?

 

Are they connected or within a 100 metre radius of your core switch? If so, do you have 7 spare 10/100/1000 gb ports on your core switch? if you do, you could have them cabled to your core and you would have a connection as fast as it possibly can be for your current set-up. This isn't a massive job at all.

 

If you don't have any spare gigabit ports, you could look into the cost for a module. We have a HP 4108GL and a refurbished 6 port module cost me around £100. A 24 port is £675.00

 

if on an edge switch, each Ruckus AP is like a 30 port switch. If this is just connected to a port on a switch which as you say has another 47 ports then the bandwidth is limited to the pipe going from that edge switch to the core. Are other switches in the cabinet also sharing this pipe?

 

If it's an edge cabinet, how many actual fibres do you have? 1 x OM1 fibre? total, 1 per switch, etc?

 

Gary

[Dantech]

Hi

 

Thanks for the feedback. I have thought of all that. Our site has ten buildings spread apart physically with 1Gb Mulimode fibre between them. Each building has at least one edge switch at the receiving end of the cable from the core. We are maxed out on fibre connections with all 12 being used (some buildings have two fibres going to them, hence 12. In the science block I ran a new 1Gb cable last half term and used a cheap HP switch which has the new 1Gb AP's plugged into these using Mid-span injectors (this was cheaper than buying a dedicated PoE switch for just 4 AP's). This way the 4 AP's have a dedicated 1Gb feed from the Core switch. However we still struggle to get 15 laptops in together, but these are all HP nx6325 running XP Pro with a b\g network card.

 

We are replacing our core switch on 18th July to provide us with a 24 port 1Gb Optic Module. This will provide a further 12 optic links which will allow us direct 1Gb feeds for data direct to the AP's. However because I am also replacing 3 edge switches to provide 1Gb on the desktop we are also provide proper PoE switches in these areas. It all conmes down to affordability I'm afraid. Ideally I would buy all new 1Gb dual band Ruckas AP's and buy laptops with n ready wireless built in.

 

I found through experience NOT to use an n ready USB adapter because the computer does not pre-authentic properly and mapped drives under this scenario do not map properly leaving our users with no home drive h\:

 

Mark

Edited July 5, 2011 by Dantech
typo errors

[ronnoco]

Is purchasing some high powerered standard pcmcia cards an option?

 

4 AP's sharing a 1Gb pipe to the core should be sufficient. The type of switch they are connected to may make a difference. Are you using romaing, madatory profiles, etc...how big is it?

 

I take it when you get your new core switch you are going to utilise the spare fibre that is your 8 other cabinets? The gbic modules are pricey but you will have nearly double the bandwidth available with this change.

 

We're looking at a whole school wireless solution at the moment...this post has helped.

[Dantech]

Is purchasing some high powerered standard pcmcia cards an option?

 

4 AP's sharing a 1Gb pipe to the core should be sufficient. The type of switch they are connected to may make a difference. Are you using romaing, madatory profiles, etc...how big is it?

 

I take it when you get your new core switch you are going to utilise the spare fibre that is your 8 other cabinets? The gbic modules are pricey but you will have nearly double the bandwidth available with this change.

 

We're looking at a whole school wireless solution at the moment...this post has helped.

 

Hi

 

Look at Aruba too. Their system broadcasts on one channel and appears to get over the simultaneous login issue. To rip out the Ruckas after investing nearly £20 in the last 3 years is not something I would do lightly.

 

I am thinking of trunking two 1Gb ports to provide a 2Gb feed to a couple of areas where laptops are used heavily.

 

Thanks for the suggestion about the PCMCIA cards - I have not used these for so long that I forgot these may work. I will look at cost and availability.

 

Best of luck with your search. By the way our system was originally installed by Nexgen Solutions and worked well for the first year until we introduced Vista. We dsicovered that IP 6 screwed things up so we have turned this off on all our network. However one day in the not too distant future we may have to use it as the IP addresses have all run out!

 

Mark

[ronnoco]

We actually have Ruckus already. We purchased it earlier this year for a new co-location build. Although it's not gone in the build yet because it's not finished, we have used 1 AP in a mini ICT Suite and have been been very pleased with it.

 

We have a room with 18 Dell Optiplex computers, all with Cisco Linksys dual band PCI wireless cards conencted to 1 Ruckus AP. This AP is patched to the gigabit port on a HP Procurve 10/100 switch which it shared with another 20 computers. There is a 1 Gb OM1 fibre back to the core. Machines are a mixture of Windows 7 and XP and generally speaking, it all works well.

 

The bandwidth for your example really shouldn't be a problem. I would try the PCMCIA cards. USB in my experience have never been great. PCMCIA will be quicker. Just make sure you get the correct type because there are 3 versions now.

 

Good luck.

[Dantech]

Hi

 

Thanks for your feedback. Do you not have problems logging in 15 machines at once. I assume your wireless cards are n ready?

 

Mark

[BHMS]

I have no problem with 32 logging in although 5-10 usually decide to connect to another AP. What speed are they connecting at? It sounds like an interference problem rather than a bandwidth problem. Might be worth making sure there are no overlapping APs on that channel. I've found Ruckus will sometimes automatically stick itself in a busy channel so I set my channels manually.

[Dantech]

All our channels are set by the zone director. It had not occurred to me to set the channels manually. I think interference is the problem and I think too many AP's are close to each other. I am seriously looking at investing in a Wi-Spy device to see what is really happening on the wavebands.

 

The main problem area is science where we have two blocks seperated by a 12 foot gap and I see overlap between them. Once science teachers laptop constantly swaps between one AP and another because they have similar signal strengths.

 

Mark

[ZeroHour]

All our channels are set by the zone director. It had not occurred to me to set the channels manually. I think interference is the problem and I think too many AP's are close to each other. I am seriously looking at investing in a Wi-Spy device to see what is really happening on the wavebands.

 

The main problem area is science where we have two blocks seperated by a 12 foot gap and I see overlap between them. Once science teachers laptop constantly swaps between one AP and another because they have similar signal strengths.

 

Mark

 

Take a look at inSSIDer | MetaGeek its free and a good tool to start with.

 

http://www.metageek.net/images/products/inSSIDer 2/inssider 2.png

Edited July 6, 2011 by ZeroHour

[BHMS]

If you have an android phone you can get Wifi Analyzer from the marketplace or just use inSSIDer and a laptop.

 

Edit: ZH beat me to it!

[ronnoco]

I've not seen any problems and there have been no complaints regarding the speed. We did have to move the location of the AP as originally we had it in a room opposite, no too far away but the signal going through 2 walls wasn't great. Now we have the AP in the same room, it serves all 18 really well. We always use windows built in software for managing wireless connections, never the supplied software.

 

The cards are Cisco Linksys Dual-Band Wireless-N PCI (both size back planes included) and they cost £23.00 from Ebuyer.

 

Baring in mind the AP is only connected on a 10/100 switch, shared with other computers, they work really well. I have been really suprised as it's a PE room and they spend a lot of their time on youtube or sports websites with video.

 

We are now seriously looking at the whole school solution. I like the idea of buying a new POE core switch to stack to our 2 X HP4108GL's. My thinking is running all AP's in the 100 metre range back to this. I'm still not sure on this, it seems very messy. Ideally we would use our exissting cabinets but I just don't think the links are quick enough despite the good performance from the Ruckus at the moment.

 

Hope this helps.

[Dantech]

Hi

 

A big thanks to Mark from Computer Products Ltd | Home who rang and discussed my issue. He has come up with some straight forward practical things to try:

 

• Reduce the power on the AP's which are close together
  
• I have a Wi-Fi Analyzer free App on my Android Phone and can use this to check for general bandwidth crowding
  
• Check from the Ruckas web console how many AP's can be seen from a classroom and turn down the power so these are not fighting for the connection
  

I had another really good idea to increase the bandwidth available for the AP's in one science block. Since I now have two Optic fibres from the core going to the science blaock I will trunk these to provide a 2Gb backbone and then the 4 AP's and the 4 wired PC's will have 2Gb to share! I will do this this summer.

 

Mark

Edited July 6, 2011 by Dantech
Typo's

[Chris_Cook]

What authentication methods are you using? We have had some problems with laptops not connecting because they failed the radius authentication. If you log in to one of the problematic laptops with a local account and watch it try to connect.

 

We have found some wifi drivers don't work at all well, and have had to hunt down different drivers to the ones that the manufacturers list. Our Toshiba M40s and Samsung NP210+s where particularly bad for this. The M40s wouldn't talk wpa2, the 210+s where very slow and hung when trying to do a windows update. We have also found we have fewer problems with windows 7 laptops than windows xp.

[Dantech]

Hi Chris

 

We use WPA2 and you are right we do not have a problem with Windows 7 laptops (we can't afford new ones). When the system first went in everything was XP and we did not have anywhere near the problems we have now. Like you the exact drivers are crucial to success. We had a Realtek driver on the HP 550 Laptops (we have 90 of these) had a known issue, but after updating them all we are having few problems with them and they have Windows 7 on them now. The science ones are old running XP and I need to find time to update these drivers. I found this same wireless card in my Toshiba brand new n ready laptop and always had random disconnection problems at home on my Belkin Router but wierdly not on the Ruckas at work. After updating the driver the speed of connection leapt at home and with the Ruckas.

 

The company that installed it did not raise the issue of suitable drivers and suitable wireless cards. I discovered Ruckas do have a less of tested ones, but obviously that can't test all of them. Unfortunately for the unwitting IT Manager who buys laptops based on price and features the wireless card was not scrutinized. If I were buying a new laptop now I would be really carefully to ensure it had wireless n and had a driver I could investigate before I bought it.

 

My advice to everyone is to update to the latest driver on ALL the wireless devices.

[Dantech]

I just want to say out of sheer desperation I e-mail Ruckus direct and explained my problem and experience with my Support people. They have been brilliant and are going to send someone to sort it out. I have had someone ring me straight away and has gone off to analyse the data. I really hope they fiond the cause.

 

Interstingly has anyone checked the CPU utilization on the real time monitoring screen. I am seeing 100% CPU utilization every few minutes and that is today when our entire network core switch was replaced and only 3 clients connected to the system! I wonder if my Zone director is faulty. Can someone please look at theirs and tell me what is "normal".

 

Take a loook at the attachment of the 5 minute graph. It does not seem normal to me.