MasterRacker
New member
We have a facility where we have implemented a Meru MC500 controller and 5 Meru AP208 access points. In general, this seems to be pretty good equipment, however in the process of trying to troubleshoot problems with a pair of Avaya 3631 wireless IP phones we discovered that the signal strength seems to have become unstable.
The Merus are supposed to have dynamic power output but this is something different. One of the expected behaviors with the phones is that you can walk into a weak signal area, then stand still for a minute. On the phone you should see the bars climb back to max as the AP senses the weak connection and boosts power to compensate. This is no longer happening.
The controller was also reporting a lot of packet loss. Once we saw that, we turned off the phones and all wireless notebooks. The error rate dropped to nothing of course since there was no traffic. We fired up one notebook again with Netstumbler and just watched it for a while.
What was weird is with no traffic to trigger any power changes we were seeing periodic changes in signal strength in both AP that were in range. Even stranger, we would see a momentary drop for one SSID on one AP but not for the other two SSIDs on the same AP.
Some of the errors suggested interference, however we haven't seen this kind of problem in the past and no new equipment has been installed in this facility.
Anyone have any ideas? Anyone have Meru experience?
_____
Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]
The Merus are supposed to have dynamic power output but this is something different. One of the expected behaviors with the phones is that you can walk into a weak signal area, then stand still for a minute. On the phone you should see the bars climb back to max as the AP senses the weak connection and boosts power to compensate. This is no longer happening.
The controller was also reporting a lot of packet loss. Once we saw that, we turned off the phones and all wireless notebooks. The error rate dropped to nothing of course since there was no traffic. We fired up one notebook again with Netstumbler and just watched it for a while.
What was weird is with no traffic to trigger any power changes we were seeing periodic changes in signal strength in both AP that were in range. Even stranger, we would see a momentary drop for one SSID on one AP but not for the other two SSIDs on the same AP.
Some of the errors suggested interference, however we haven't seen this kind of problem in the past and no new equipment has been installed in this facility.
Anyone have any ideas? Anyone have Meru experience?
_____
Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]
