Hi,
I'm having a problem in one of my customers with the WiFi network. There are two different issues:
1) The first one is that very often the clients get connected to one of the SSIDs but instead of connect to the nearest AP they connect to a further one, with so less level signal than the one that is closer.
2) The second problem is that when they are connected, suddenly they get disconnected. And most of the times, that happens with clients that were connected to far APs instead of the closer ones.
I know that the choice of which APs to connect to is a responsibility of the client and it's not of AP or WLC. But I don't know why clients are having this behavior.
The infrastructure is composed of one WLC (version 4.2.112) and 4 APs AIR-LAP1252G-A-K9. All the APs were mounted on the wall and they had fix antennas, so they were oriented horizontally. I thought the problem could be the orientation of them because their polarization (that is linear), so we took of all the APs from the wall and we put them on some desks in order for the antennas to get oriented vertically. Unfortunately that didn't change the behavior of clients and they still sudenly disconnect from the APs they are connected.
I thinks it's necesary tell you that the customer bought a pair of Linksys WRT line and he doesn't have any problem with those wireless routers (unbelievable!!!)
The next step we are gonna take is changing the WLC's software version, because 4.2.112 is a very old one. But I don't think that is going to solve the problem.
Onother thing, but I think it has nothing to do with the problem, is that the authentication is done y 802.1x and they use certificates to validate each computer or laptop. I repeat, I think this has nothing to do with the problem but we don't try to change the authentication method.
Lastly, we performed a site survey and the signal is very strong all over the floor where they are having problems. Of course, almost everywhere you always "see" the signal of the APs that is nearest and a weaker one of the APs that are further. They also have a lot of signal of another floors in the same building of another companies that introduce same interference, but as I told you, with the WiFi provided but the Linksys routers they don't have any problem. We also tried to change manually the signal power of the APs, but again, the problem was not solved.
Thanks,
Guido.
