Wireless problems using the SRC cards. Need Help

[brianr]

Large hospital network. We use Cisco 1242 series Access Points. LEAP Authentication is used through for the wireless cart devices. All these devices use the SRC card.

These carts are just laptops inside flo cart so nurses can wheel them around room to room with patients. They have an external antenna connected to them, plugged into ANT1.

They are all experiencing the same problems. I have never seen one actually break before me, but I have come across them after they are broken. Basically you walk up to a cart and the screen will be in power save mode. This is just the screen, settings under the clinet have the Power Save Mode on Off.

Anyway, go up to the cart, bump the mouse to activate the screen, and chances are that the cart will no longer be authenticated on the wireless network. It is as if the card has shut off its antenna. You actually have to right click down on the toolbar and tell this to reauthenticate to make it work again. I can not figure out why.

Happens all over, not at a specific time interval. Very random. I am looking for settings to double check.

So far, I have gone under device management and checked the followings.

Clear List on Scan = Off
Power Save Mode = 0ff, this was set to on, even though we turned it off under the clinic configuration when we setup LEAP.
Under the wireless properties of the NIC, I have removed the checkmark that allows windows to configure the device.

Question also on the power save mode, I assume the client setting overrides the setting under device manager. Took it for granted that is a global setting and you can then turn it on or off based on profile.

I see some reports about antenna diversity, and even followed a link here to madwifi, but I think it is referring to the driver and settings on Linix. I do not see where I can force Antenna Diversity to off. My options are Controllable, Fixed A, Fixed B. Again, the antennas are connected to ANT1, according to the label on the back of the cards.

What else can I look at? What else would you like to know? We have multiple laptops throughout the hospital using Atheros or Intel internal cards. No external antenna connected. They have 0 issues with this.

[UBNT-Mike.Ford]

Hello Brain,

I am asking my software engineer's to jump in here.

Thank you,

Mike

[brianr]

Thanks.

Our test run from yesterday and today where we installed these NIC's with antennas into laptops that PC Techs use has not reproduced the issue. Usually takes a couple days to see it though, so we are just waiting.

[garybesant]

Was there a solution to this as I am having exactly the same issue??

[cwong]

We're experiencing similar problem too. Was was your solution to fix it?

We currently have about 60 units and some of the units run continuously and would never shut down. We're very happy with the performance and quick roaming of the SRC. However, from time to time, normally after a few days of connection, the unit would drop out of the network and would never re-associate until we reboot the Operating system.
We tried enabling and disabling the radio card but still won't re-associate.

We're using WEP security with Aruba AP-80 access point.

Please respond back ASAP and I'll try to contact the tech support with a phone call. Since this problem is affecting our client's productivity. It we can't fix the problem, we simply can't use your radio card in our equipment anymore.

Thanks.

[mvarga]

I think we may be having the same issue...

We have mobile units that travel in and out of coverage, 24 hrs a day, 7 days per week.

Our infrastructure is Cisco 1522 APs w/ a mixture of 3230 MAR Clients and Ubiquity clients. All units are running dual 7db Gain antennas.

On startup, the devices connect and receive an IP, however, as they travel in and out of coverage, they become less reliable at establishing a link. On a bench test, I found the following routine was experienced...

- Connected to WIFI
- Received IP
- <I removed the antenna from the device to disconnect from WIFI>
- <I reconnected the antenna to the device to establish WIFI>
- Received same IP
- <I removed the antenna from the device to disconnect from WIFI>
- <I reconnected the antenna to the device to establish WIFI>
- Unit showed no link, and lost its IP. The unit did not scan the channels to attempt to re-link.
- <I removed the antenna from the card>
- Unit started scanning channels
- Established link
- Leased IP
- Lost IP and link. Again unit did not scan the channels to re-link
- <I removed the antenna from the card>
.... this happened about 15 times...
- I reconnected the antenna, same as I had before, and it established a link and held it...
then...
- <I removed the antenna from the device to disconnect from WIFI>
- <I reconnected the antenna to the device to establish WIFI>
- Unit showed no link, and lost its IP. The unit did not scan the channels to attempt to re-link.

So as you can see, it is repeatable, and is causing signficant connectivity issues as the operators do not have access to self-instantiate a connection. We are not seeing this behavior on other WIFI clients, MARs or Toughbooks in the envionment.

Please advise.

[cwong]

mvarga,
Hopefully we can find a solution between us. I'll sure to post the solution if we find one.
We're going to play with the setting and see if the problem goes away.

This is our setting:
WEP pre-shared key.
Allow association to mixed cell.
SuperA/G: enabled
eXtended range (XR): enabled
QoS: enabled
802.11 Authentication mode: Auto
Transmit Power Level: 25dBm (100%)
Power save Mode: Off.
Network Type: Infrastruction.
Antenna Diversity: Fixed-A
Auto Transmit Rate: On
Background San: On
Calibration Period: 30
clear List on Scan: Off

May be we can compare the configuration and start changing the setting on what we have in common.

I'm in the process of setting up 1 machine with auto calibration feature turned off.

Have you try other drivers with the SRC?

[mvarga]

Here are mine to compare to...

I saw significant improvement by turning off the power saving mode.. I'm not getting BSOD anymore.. however the in/out of coverage issue seems still be manifesting itself.

I have tried the different versions that UBNT provides... I'm running the latest 7.7 package.

WPA - TKIP
Allow association to mixed cell.
SuperA/G: enabled
eXtended range (XR): enabled
QoS: enabled
802.11 Authentication mode: Auto
Transmit Power Level: 25dBm (100%)
Power save Mode: Off.
Network Type: Infrastruction.
Antenna Diversity: Controllable
Auto Transmit Rate: On
Background San: On
Calibration Period: 30
clear List on Scan: Off

[cwong]

Mvarga,
Our configuration almost identical except the security and Antenna diversity.
I did what you described, disconnecting and reconnecting the antenna for over 75 times. Left it unplug overnight then plug it back in but still couldn't replicate the problem.
However, I disabled the calibration mode on one of the machine at our client site and see what will happen.
By the way, what do you mean by BSOD? Where you getting blue screen of death? Seem like you have some more serious problem. I'll try it on my laptop and have the power saving mode turn on. How long did it take you to get the BSOD or how did you make it happen?

I'm going to change one setting at a time until I see some changes.
1. Authentication mode: Auto to Open. (didn't make any different)
2. Calibration Period: for 30 to 0
3. Allow association to mixed cell - uncheck.
4. Clear List on Scan: Off to on.

If you already tried the older driver 5.8 from this site and didn't help, then I won't try it myself.

One thing I found was when the SRC card stop authenticating, I tried restarting the driver with no help. But if I removed the card from the PCMCIA slot and re-inserting it. The card will authenticate again. Now I'm not sure it is a software problem or hardware problem. It almost seem like the SRC card need a power reset or something.

Thanks.

[mvarga]

What would be nice is if one of the Engineers could chime in with some guidance.

[cwong]

Mvarga,
This is one of the major problem with this forum. You can find a lot of good question but don't see good answers.
I hate it when they ask people to e-mail them directly. The whole idea of form is to share question and answer. Why did they ask people to e-mail them directly? What were they trying to hide?

I was able to replicate the problem by following your suggestion, but it was system specific. I only able to replicate it with DHCP and both wireless and LAN connection turned on.
I "ping -t" my AP while disconnecting and re-connecting the antenna on my SRC card. After 10 to 20 times, the SRC start having problem reconizing my AP channel and keep scanning continuously. My AP channel was set to 6. However, once I set my SRC card to fix IP, I can't replicate the problem anymore.
But this problem is happening at our client site, which the SRC card has fixed IP and no additional LAN connection. It may just take more roaming with fix IP? I don't know.

Anyway, I realize that when I disconnect the antenna, my ping session would be routed to the LAN connection automatically with TTL timed out (due to different network). However, once I restat the acs service the SRC card connected back to my AP right away. I was using taskkill and start command to restat the acs service.
Currently we're waiting for this problem to happen again at our client site, then we'll restart the acs service and see if it will fix the connection. If it works, we migh just embedded the function in our program to restart the service rather than waiting for an answer that will never come to us.
Did you ever try restating the acs service when you experiencing the problem? Give it a try.

[cwong]

Mvarga,
I replicated the problem on my Dell laptop with XP pro. I captured the problem, my SRC card setting, AP setting in flash video and jpeg.
I realized that the ACS service gone up to 38,000K when it was experiencing problem, then back to 2,000K when the association was completely off, then 9,000K when it is back to normal.
The last video shows how I can bring the SRC card back to normal by restarting the ACS service.
I sent all the videos and screen capture to Tim West at Ubiquiti, hopefully my information are sufficient enough for them to figure out what is wrong with the SRC card.
If you like to obtain a set of my video captures, let me know. 4 videos total and each is around 3 to 6 MB.

[cwong]

I haven't heard anything back from Tim West at Ubiquiti yet after I sent him the video. However, I decided to uninstall the Ubiquiti Mobility Driver 7.7 and install Altheros driver 7.7.0.456 on my test bench laptop. The SRC card hasn't experienced any problem yet, but the power level only goes up to 79mW and max out at 100mW instead of 200mW.

[mvarga]

Thanks for the information cwong. Sorry I didn't get back to you any sooner.

The lack of response from the UBNT engineers is very disconcerting and is a driving force behind our organization to consider removing a large representation of the ubiquity hardware from our environment.

I read your comment on the fact you are using the Atheros driver successfully with the cards and I'm intrigued. I don't see the 75/100mw as a huge concern in our environment as we are using 6dbi antennas so we more than make up for the loss in transmitter power in high gain omni antennas. :)

Remember, to double your range, you need 10x the power.. so really you might be losing 20% of your range at most by dropping to the 100mw.

We are also considering using the universal wireless client provided by Juniper networks to replace the Ubiquity client. This client would be universal across any brand of WIFI card we used and can be set as a standard for our environment regardless of the equipment in place. Imagine having a universal driver, and a universal client, you could literally not be tied to any particular card and be completely compatible. I'm sure its a pipe dream and it holds many more surprises when put into practice, but its nice to dream. :)

Anyhow, where did you acquire your Atheros driver from? Is there a licensing cost? I plan on making a proposal to management on how to proceed forward as this issue this week and let them stew on it while I'm away on vacation. :icon_twisted:

Ubiquity Techs: Are you simply gleaning information from your tech savy users for inclusion in your future releases or are you going to help us out and offer solutions to our issues.

Thanks.

[mvarga]

Okay, that makes sense. There's certainly no point in mixing oil and water if its not required.

I'm going to do a test run hopefully today to see what kind of stability I get. I'm also concerned that this type of change will require a heavy touch to execute, causing more downtime.

Again, I'm very disapointed that UBNT technicians have not piped in with any comments or direction. It's not too late to save face.

[mvarga]

Okay, that makes sense. There's certainly no point in mixing oil and water if its not required.

I'm going to do a test run hopefully today to see what kind of stability I get. I'm also concerned that this type of change will require a heavy touch to execute, causing more downtime.

Again, I'm very disapointed that UBNT technicians have not piped in with any comments or direction. It's not too late to save face.

[cwong]

Mvarga,
I contacted Atheros and left a message to request for the latest Driver but they didn't call me back. However, I was able to obtain their driver through http://www.station-drivers.com/page/atheros.htm. the version that I downloaded was 7.7.0.456.
I received an e-mail from Tim West at Ubiquiti and he told me that Ubiquiti is scheduled to relese their new driver that is based on the Atheros driver that I downloaded. But he also said there is not a set date for the release. He said the current Mobility driver is based on Atheros 7.4.0.226. I couldn't find it on the internet, but tested version 7.4.2.75 that doesn't come with the client tool. I tested it with WZC and this version of Atheros driver seem to be very stable.

Atheros 7.7.0.456 came with the Client tool that is almost identical to Ubiquiti's Mobility. I event tested 7.7.0.456 with WZC and seem to be very stable too.

Good Luck.

[mvarga]

Cwong: by using the Atheros driver, are you not able to use the Ubiquity client?

[cwong]

The Mobility installation only allow me either install both their driver and utility or the driver alone. It doesn't allow me to install the client utility alone.
Since the Atheros driver came with the client utility that almost identical to the Ubiquiti's anway, so I didn't go the extra step to test out this combination. I also felt that I would be asking for trouble if I combine a newer driver with older client utility.
Why did you ask? Are you wondering if we can get the 200mW power level back? I can give it a try later this week, but my Linksys AP is currently off the network being used for different test.

[mvarga]

I did some preliminary testing with the Atheros driver. There is one serious drawback... No Diversity support (from what I can tell).

This is a deal killer for us as we place one antenna on each side of the equipment, which essentially would leave the equipment blind 1/2 the time.

Ubiquity: Please release an updated driver!

[cwong]

Mvarga,
The new driver 7.7.1.0 has been released. Have you tried it yet? I'm in the process of replicating the association drop out problem again and see if the new release would resolve it. I'll let you all know what I found out.