Has anything changed now towards auto channel selection during operation?
Referring to this topic here:
Will AP’s scan their environment and adjust channels/TX power more frequently?
Yes seems the update has issues a 40 Mhz on 44 ends up as 80 regardless.
Changing the channel seems to drop it back to 40 but not good for an upgrade.
Hey Carl, I just want to make sure we’re on the same page about your comment.
My understanding of this update is that the channel width must be set to 80MHz or Auto, and the channel must be configured to Auto.
I’m not sure why your AP seems to have bounced from a configured 40MHz wide bad to 80MHz, if I don’t mistake your comment. That may be something we can look into, but I believe you are intended to set the Auto//Auto config to gain the benefits of this improved feature.
Does this also improve the auto power for each channel in a multiple AP setup? Or is it just channel selection being more aware?
Also, just mentioning the above does it scan more to keep addressing or just at power on/reboot?
That’s exactly what I’ve been asking.
@user12 @TeWe The upgrade only adjust channels and does not adjust power. On auto, it scans and adjusts on reboot and now once a day.
Thanks for that info @Alta-Chase - and what’s the formula behind it?
Last reboot time + 24 hours or randomly within next 24 hours after last reboot?
Maybe we can get a configurable field to define the (daily) scan time in the Management UI?
That would be nice.
And once a day seems okay and enough to me.
Sorry yes an upgrade from 2.0y to 2.0z of a single access point - the user interface remained at 40 Mhz BUT it changed to 80 Mhz. I would not have even noticed apart from a NetSpot check - some alteration of the web interface like moving channel reverted it back to 40 Mhz and it stuck there then.
@CarlH @TeWe Channel width is also adjusted to optimize for the conditions experienced during the scan every 24 hours, if its set to auto. It will assure all channel widths match on a single site.
Should all APs be set to auto, but one be hard set, the utility will adjust the bandwidth on it as well to assure all APs match.
We are updated the release notes to include this additional detail.
Please make it clear what time of day these changes happen. Having them happen during business hours is generally very frowned upon. Even making it available for use to choose when that happens would be extremely helpful.
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Hi @Alta-Chase, I am having a lot of trouble using the Auto Channel feature with my AP6 Pro. I am using Alta’s Cloud Controller. Since the Auto-Channel feature is getting more and more useful (I love the new 1-day channel selection feature) and I want to use it, here are my observations. The problems described here are not only caused by the update, I had a few of them before and could not use the Auto-Channel feature because of them. To understand the problems (they are repeatable), I have listed the steps that lead to the same problems with the Auto-Channel feature every time:
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Step 1 (normal behavior). I set the 2G and 5G channels both to auto. Then I reboot my AP. After rebooting, the AP searches for the best channels and switches to them. Clients can connect to both the 2G and 5G channels. This is the behavior I expect. So far, everything is working perfectly.
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Step 2 (normal behavior). I manually change the channels to “non-optimal” channels in the 2G and 5G bands, i.e. I set the channels to defined values such as “Channel 6” and “Channel 52”. The AP changes to these manually set channels and the clients can connect without any problems. Again, everything works perfectly.
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Step 3: (abnormal behavior). When I now configure the channels in the 2G and 5G bands back to Auto (and do not reboot), the AP searches for better channels after a short time and automatically switches to the optimal channels found by the AP in often less than 1 minute. The problem is that after this, no client can connect to the AP on the 5G band, even though it is broadcasting. Even if I force the clients to use the 5G band exclusively, the clients cannot connect to the AP. If I reboot the AP (keeping the auto channel), the clients can connect to the AP after the reboot. This means that for me, the auto channel only works in conjunction with a reboot.
I had hoped that my problem would be solved with the new Auto-Channel feature. Unfortunately not. Today morning my AP has changed to a different/better channel in the 5G band using the new auto channel selection feature based on 1 day. Directly afterwards, clients could still connect to the AP in the 2G band, but no client could, as before, establish a connection with the 5G band.
Now, a few hours later, I can no longer even access the cloud controller (neither via the iOS app nor via the browser, a login is rejected, i.e. I am redirected to the login page every time I try to log in).
In addition, I now see such slow connection types that I have never seen before. I am used to seeing 802.11ac or 802.11ax connections, but not a “g”:
I am not worried because I know that a power cycle of my AP will fix the problems… but only until the next channel change triggered by the auto channel feature.
As I said, I am using the Cloud Controller and have not yet rebooted my AP… hoping that someone from Alta Labs can help me solve this problem.
I can confirm the same behavior. Once the APs auto pick a channel, I have to reboot both APs before my devices can connect. It’s very strange.
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@Joachim @rutman286 Interesting. Thank you for reporting that. We are working to replicate this on our side.
I quick follow up question for you on this, do either of you have your transmit power set to anything other than “Auto” while you have been working with this new feature?
Hi @Alta-Chase, good point. Originally, I have set the transmit power for 2G to 20dBm and for 5G to 23dBm.
But I just did the test again with auto, i.e. I come from this working setting:
Almost all of my clients are now on channel 40. Channel 40 is a very busy channel in my area. Then I changed my configuration to the following:
My AP6 Pro very quickly detected that channel 40 is very busy and switched to channel 56 in less than 1 minute - a very good channel choice. This means that my AP now has the following configuration:
And now I have the described problem. All my clients are connected to channel 11. If I force a client to use the 5G network, he cannot establish a connection with my AP6 Pro. My 5G band is no longer usable.
Solution: If I now restart my AP6 Pro, the configuration remains the same, i.e. 2G is on channel 11, 5G is on channel 56, but all my clients can connect to the 5G network again.
For the sake of completeness, here are my other relevant configurations on the subject.
@Joachim I’m trying to recreate the issue you are seeing. I sent you a message asking for a bit more information
Hi @Alta-Corbin, thanks for your quick response. To answer your questions: I live in Europe/Germany. And yes, the problem existed before version 2.0z. Sorry I did not report it earlier.
Whether I trigger the “auto channel coordination” manually, as described above, or whether it is executed automatically after 24 hours (with the newly implemented logic in 2.0z), has the same result: the 5G channel cannot be used (because in both cases no reboot has taken place).
And I invited you to my site and gave you admin rights. I have set my AP to the above state, in which the 5G band can no longer be used by the clients, i.e. directly before the above mentioned reboot.
Thank you! I’m sure we will get this figured out
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