Hi guys, we have 4 AP6 pros in our office setup, 3 of which are in our main office and 1 in a separate office(but still closeby). The APs are probably 10 meters apart from each other.
The users in our main office frequently have their Wi-Fi dropping, like maybe once every 1-2 hours. We have a radius server configured and the logs on then NPS don’t indicate any authentication error.
Another thing to note is that sometimes when the user keys in their credentials for the Wi-Fi, it seems that the AP is not communicating the request to the server. Normally when a user connects to the Wi-Fi, there will be an authentication log on the NPS stating whether its a success or failure. However, many a time when the user is trying to connect, the logs on the NPS don’t even appear, which leads me to think that the AP is not communicating properly with the Radius server.
Lastly, it is not a mesh setup, they are all directly connected to our 24 port ALTA switch. May I know what are the things that I should be looking at or troubleshooting please?
May I ask why they are so close together? Residential and small business office spaces do impact the total coverage of an AP versus open-air stadium environments, but you still get roughly 1500 sq ft out of one. I would definitely investigate whether some of the APs should just be disabled or spread further apart first. I’m not extremely confident that this would solve the issue you’re experiencing, but it’s a starting point for now.
Hi Josh! We used to have only two in the main office. However, users at the extreme ends of the office were getting very weak signals, hence we added one more. Even when there were only two, this issue still existed.
I am wondering if the RJ45 ethernet cable the AP’s are connected to is is the correct spec. Have you tried lowering the connection speed to say 1G instead of Auto.
Hey Josh/Don, thanks for this. I have changed the settings accordingly and we will see how it goes for now. As for the RJ45 cables, I’m pretty sure they are of correct spec. I’ll test it out for the day and will get back to you guys with any updates!
Hey all, just a quick update - it doesn’t drop as frequent the past two days, still drops a couple of times though, maybe 2-3 times per day. It might be attributed to the fact that lesser people are in the office hence lower usage(?) Will need to monitor for a longer period of time. However, if there are any other solutions, kindly let me know as well! Thank you!
Try running a scan from the AP, in the Info tab. Check for high interference in the results. I suppose you may be seeing periodic DFS hits on the 5GHz, which isn’t extremely uncommon.
Do you notice any pattern to the timing, duration or periodicity of the issue?
Mhmm it really just happens randomly, like literally it could happen at any given moment. Is there somewhere we can view the logs to somehow pinpoint the issue?
Just another update, the issue is back. We have replicated the configuration with radius on our alta AP onto a unifi AP just for testing purposes today and the wifi managed to stay on throughout the day without any drops. May I check if there are any settings on the alta AP that I need to look at or is there a bug somewhere? I have feedback from our other office also that whenever the AP is configured with radius, this happens. However, if its just a public SSID with a normal password the issue disappears.
There was a firmware update for the AP’s just before Xmas which improved my wifi. In my case the neighbours wifi signals were causing my AP’s to shut down due to interference… This update altered the level of interference at which the AP’s shutdown happened. This has worked well for me. But from your last comment I cant see this helping very much. Have you tried setting your wifi channels to fixed values? Need to be careful on which channel is on which AP though. Ideally you don’t want them all on the same wifi channel.
Can you syslog events from the AP’s or even all the network , to see what’s happening ?
Unfortunately I am out of ideas now.
We have made sure to separate the channels for all the APs. Also ran a wifi analyzer for ensure that. I did a syslog on the AP itself but couldn’t manage to find any logs pertaining to the issue unfortunately, which is why I’m here seeking answers
We are running an NPS, I have attached a photo of an example when a user is authenticated for your reference. Please let me know if there are any other logs that you might need. Thanks!!
We certainly aren’t seeing anything like this in our internal testing, so we’d need to take a look at your AP logs to be able to help out. Can you post them and share them directly with me? I’ll send you a DM so you can send them directly.
