Random AP's stop broadcasting SSiD's

[pjc]

Hello all,

I've noticed recently in the last few months that we have a had a few cases of where a MR44 (it may well be other models too) stops broadcasting it's SSiD's and therefore clients are unable to connect.

When I look in the dashboard at the affected AP, the summary page does not show any clients currently connected, but instead is spinning as below, doesn't show a number of clients as normal (below)

Also, when you try a throughput test in dashboard tools, it eventually errors and also pings in the dashboard tools return 100% loss.  However, I can ping the AP on the network from any PC.  I have also found that the reboot tool in the dashboard does not work and it reports as unable to reboot.

The only way I can recover the AP (other than physically unplug) is if I power cycle the switch port it's connected to and it's then fine again.

This has happened to a random selection of AP's over the last couple of months for me.  All running firmware 30.5. I don't know if the issues was present in earlier versions of firmware.

I've not logged a call as it's so infrequent and random, I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced similar issues ?

I'm upgrading my estate to 30.6 next week, be interesting to see if the problem goes away then

Thanks all

[GreenMan]

I really recommend you open a case with Support.   At first glance this looks similar to a known issue, which I understand is likely to be fixed in 30.7, rather than 30.6.   The Support team will be able to confirm if it's that particular problem and advise on next steps.

[pjc]

Thanks for the advice, sounds like it could be a problem not unique to us.  Next time it happens, I'll capture all of the relevant symptoms including those already mentioned and raise a case  

[Macguy]

Also curious if you are seeing this just on MR44 or other model AP's?

[pjc]

I've definitely seen it affecting a MR36 and a couple of MR44's over the last 3 months, same symptoms for both models as mentioned in original post and both models running FW 30.5.

[pjc]

Within an hour of posting above, issue at one site, 6 out of the 8 MR44's there with he same problem.  Below is the message I captured when trying a throughput test.  Toggled PoE on switch ports, AP's recovered.  I'm hoping there is a site in the future with the issue on an AP that's not customer critical so I can investigate further with support while it remains in it's broken state (before rebooting)

[Macguy]

Do you know if this "known issue" is model specific?  All my networks are running 30.5 (mix MR33,42,53,56) and a few 30.6.  To my knowledge haven't seen this issue yet. 

[PhilipDAth]

Are you running a current stable or better firmware?

[pjc]

Running 30.5 when issues arose, which until a couple of weeks ago was the current stable (before 30.6 replaced it as current stable).  Moving to 30.6 next week

[TBHPTL]

Is it a MESH AP?

What channels?

PoE or local powered?

Are APs in bridge mode?

[BHC_RESORTS]

We've experienced this issue as well. If you do a packet capture, you will see the beacons are malformed or not being transmitted at all.

[pjc]

Had 4 x MR32's with the same issue today, all at one site.

I see that firmware BETA 31.1.1 is available, no mention of any bug fixes for non WiFi-6 AP's, and no mention of this issue either as fixed. 

I'm gonna start raising tickets I think

[BHC_RESORTS]

@pjc the MR32s are EOL soon, I don't think they will do many bug fixes for them.

[pjc]

Yep I know BHC (July) - We are in the process of replacing our MR32/33's.  The worry is that we have seen the same issue with MR44's and with no documented resolution in the latest beta firmware 31.1.1

[pjc]

For completeness in case anyone else is suffering the same issue as us, well, I logged a ticket with support, turns out this issue was introduced in an earlier version of firmware, 30.5 I think, is resolved in 30.7. 

The issue is called 'FastCGI unresponsive'.  Yep, good description that, dunno how I didn't seen that in the release notes and guess that was related that to my problem and apply the firmware update sooner (despite worried about radius authentication issues in 30.7.....)...

Note to self, any issue log with support to get the full picture