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Greetings,

I have a client that is using a Teletronics CPE in Infrastructure Mode. It has been running perfectly for several years.

The client now wants to provide wireless connectivity within the office to her staff.

The CPE is setup to provide dhcp.

We have tried the following manufacturer AP's with the latest updates and had the following problems:

Hawkings, D-link, SMC.

Once setup they function with no problems.

The problem appears the next day normally.

It appears that the AP is locking up and even prevents the workstation that is not wireless and connected to the hub/switch to also not function on the internet. Normally rebooting of the AP clears the problem, at least for a short period of time.

Site surveys seem to reveal no interference from nearby stations and the channel assigned to the AP is at least 2 channels from the closest station appearing in the site survey.

The conflict_time in the DHCP server is set to 1800 and the AP is wep enabled.

Please advise

Check to see if your APs aren't also DHCP servers. They could be handing out IP addresses on a different subnet (the default subnet for them) to your clients.

Devinator

Greetings,

The current SMCWTK-G AP that is in place is by default DHCP disabled.

I had checked the unit and have called SMC tech support to confirm the above statement.

Other than a DHCP related issue, since there are only 3 computers connected, 1 via CAT5 and two wireless, I don't think that the problem would be collisons on the network.

Any additional thoughts?

Have you done a firmware upgrade lately on the CPE device? If not, do that. If you have, sometimes reverting back to the old firmware that worked the first time is the best answer.

Last, but not least change out the CPE device with one that is a back up or a new one as that may be failing.

You say the AP is "locking up". Do you mean it's in a "stuck" state, for example, are the lights either all off or all on with no flickering? Can you http/web into it? If so, does it show a status? If not, what do you get back from it? 404 Error or what?

I have two theories on the problem you're seeing that might help you resolve it.

1) You said the system was working perfectly for several years. That tells me the equipment is dated. I don't have an issue with that; I use old APs all the time and never have a problem with them. BUT, if you're having basic connectivity problems, like being able to web into the AP to manage it when it is "locked up", that might indicate a hardware failure and the device may need to be replaced. I would do Layer 1 and 2 analysis on it first. Find out if the lights come on properly. Find out if you can ping it (if it has an IP address). Find out if you can ping from within the device to wired devices. Find out if you can ping from inside the device to wireless devices. If you can do all that then move on to step two.

2) This is where it gets trickier. It's possible that you have a neighbor who has implemented a wireless solution that gives them the ability to "contain" a rogue AP. If so, and they are indeed containing your AP, there's not much you can do about it, other than going to them and asking if they are doing it, and, if they are, telling them to "KNOCK IT OFF!".

How would you know if you are being "contained"? Well, let's say you had a WLAN that worked fine and then one day you came in and were no longer able to connect to it. If you changed parameters on the WLAN (SSID, channel) it clears it up, but only for a little while (long enough for the neighbor's WIDS to seek out the new configs and block your clients again). Using a WLAN protocol analyzer, you could see the other WLAN in operation and you'd see lots of disassociation req/resp packets.

Hope that helps. Don't jump to the conclusion that's it the second scenario too quickly. Do your homework to see if it really is a hardware issue first.

Joel