topic Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power in ExtremeCloud IQ

Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

DeVoID — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 17:02:37 GMT

hi,

I've been going through all of our AP650(ah) AP's and lowering the transmission power on with wifi0 and wifi1 interfaces.

I have set a the power to 10 on both interfaces for 10 AP's in a two floor building. While the XIQ shows that 8 of the 10 AP's are showing the correct Transmission power, i have 2 AP's that are showing as Auto on wifi0, but the correct 10db on wifi1....

If i go into configuration at the device level, wifi0 is set to manual and 10db.

Which should i believe the XIQ interface, or what the device config shows?

Any ideas why this is going on?

thanks,
J.

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

SamPirok — Mon, 02 May 2022 14:45:17 GMT

Hey, I would believe the CLI over the Web GUI. It's likely that the GUI is just lagging, or if it doesn't catch up after about a day then it's likely a GUI bug. The only troubleshooting step I'd recommend before trying a support ticket is to fully update the APs; a complete configuration update with a reboot and moving to the latest firmware version if you aren't already there.

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

DeVoID — Mon, 02 May 2022 15:10:18 GMT

Thanks Sam for getting back to me.

I left it for the whole weekend, thinking the same thing, that its just laggy for the AP to report back to the hive with the change, however this morning, its till showing those two AP's as Auto.

As soon as I dont have any client devices ont hem, il do a complete config push and see what happens. May take some time though, being a school, always something on an AP... but if that doesn't happen today, ill do it as soon as I get in tomorrow morning and will let you know how it goes.

thanks,

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

DeVoID — Wed, 04 May 2022 15:06:29 GMT

Well Rebooting the AP didn't make any difference. Next thing to try is a Complete Config Update and see if that works. Of course, if that doesn't work, i have to do something that i REALLY don't like to do, and that's take it back to Template Defaults, which means all the tweaks ive done to an AP (this one as well), ill have to re-do...... ill post back when i try the complete (have to do it when no one is on the AP.... so, could be a while). Thanks, J.

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

DeVoID — Wed, 04 May 2022 16:43:37 GMT

Nope, a Complete config push didnt change it... its still showing as Auto... so now i have to do the thing i hate most with these, and thats to default to template defaults.... ugh and sigh.....

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

dennisph — Thu, 05 May 2022 14:19:41 GMT

It will be interesting to see if that works. I have about 5000 ap650s soon to be over 6000 and none are reporting auto for the transmission power. I let the access points use ACSP to set their transmission power. I set 20 as the max and 2 as the floor. I agree with sam and would trust the command line.

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

DeVoID — Fri, 06 May 2022 16:42:23 GMT

That didnt work!!! what the heck!?

I selected the two AP's (AP650ah's), and selected ACTIONS >> Revert device to template defaults, and when all had completed i went in, and changed both wifi0 and wifi1 transmission power to 10db on both AP's, and did a Complete Configuration Update.

When the AP's came back up, they had the correct Transmit power on wifi1, but wifi0 is still showing "Auto". I thought maybe XIQ needed to catch up to the AP, btu its been 3 hours and wifi0 is still showing "Auto"....

What the heck.....?

I really, REALLY do not want to have to set them back to factory settings and start from scratch, i really dont want to do that.

Any ideas why wifi0 is not taking the manual change on two AP's?

thanks,
Jason.

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

DeVoID — Mon, 09 May 2022 14:32:02 GMT

@dennisph My AP's have always shown the max power since day 1 - with quite a few showing auto, and that concerned me, as I was told they would "learn" their surroundings and lower their transmission power to the optimum of the room. That never happened. I fairly recently enabled High Density to see if that would help problem areas - which i dont think it has - and yet still Auto on those two AP's -, so ive been going through all my indoor AP's and lowering them, to 10db on both wifi0 and wifi1 interfaces... Only a couple of times back in the day did I ever seen the Transmit power auto adjust, and it was only on wifi1 interface, and it was at 5db, but that was it. So as far as Machine Learning, and/or AI, im sorry but i think thats a sales thing, because im very confident my AP's haven't done anything themselves to give users a better experience - speed, etc.
J.

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

dennisph — Mon, 09 May 2022 21:57:56 GMT

I wonder if you have enough overlap to make them auto adjust? I would imagine you do on the 2.4ghz radio because there is only 3 channels. I usually have 60 to 100 access points at a campus so I have a lot of overlap and co channel interference but, they seem to auto adjust pretty well. I do remember years ago when I was doing the same thing you are though adjusting the radios to 10 dbm. as you can see below its definitely not a gimmick but, manual channel and power selection is always best if you have the time.

Cape_High(Rm.272)IDF6.D12#show acsp

Interface Channel select state Primary channel Channel width Power ctrl state Tx power(dbm) Use Last Selection
--------- --------------------- ---------------- ------------- --------------------- ------------- ---------------------
Wifi0 Enable 11 20 Enable 2 Channel:No Power:No
Wifi1 Enable 48 20 Enable 16 Channel:No Power:No

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

MalcolmS — Tue, 10 May 2022 08:52:16 GMT

Hi,
Not a solution for lots of APs, but you can use CLI through the web interface with multiple APs selected and cut and paste the CLI commands for each AP, each AP appears as a tab in a window. For example:

interface wifi0 radio power 6
show acsp

If you do this, it seems to change the power level immediately. Through the interface, I always had to do a Complete Configuration (with reboot) to get the new power levels.

In managing about 60 APs on campus, I have found that the auto adjust (scheduled for 2am every day) is good for channel select, but doesn't seem to change the radio power much at all. Auto as others have noted seem to result in them going to max. value, and client transmission power control doesn't seem to change the power levels either.

Regards,
Malcolm

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

DeVoID — Tue, 10 May 2022 19:50:56 GMT

Malcome/Dennis sorry for being tardy, been slammed and im also a bit under the weather.

First things first, we only have 2.4ghz enabled on our outdoor AP1130 AP's, all of our AP650(AH)'s are 5ghz only. As for overlap, we have way too much of it and it was corrupting so much network traffic it was killing the network, and noticing that they were either set to auto (which turned out to be max transmit power), or 20db on wifi0/1 I decided to manually change the transmit power, and cut both interfaces by 50%. That helped quite a bit, but in a lot of places that is still to "loud" and im having to lower them even further. From everything ive read, you dont want any kind of overlap, so @dennisph it seems i have the complete opposite of what you have.... crazy eh?

@Malcolm Snelgrove That sounds like it is liekly to work, and as soon as i have some time, ill CLI into those two AP's and try that command out... very helpful.

Appreciate everyones help. crazy none of the stuff ive tried has worked, im shocked that setting it back to template defaults, then manually adjusting transmit power didnt fix the issue... thats quite worrying.. ill keep you all posted.

thansk,
Jason.

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

DeVoID — Thu, 26 May 2022 17:08:48 GMT

Well this is just fricken great.

I did the commands (thanks for those BTW), and this is what it shows, and for both those AP's where the power on wifi0 is showing as auto:

So wifi0 is disabled on those 2 AP's... just bloody marvelous. Selecting to revert them back to template default isnt working either. ive done that several times with those AP's and still its showing Auto.

I DO NOT want to have to factory reset them, they are mounted to ceilings.... this is unreal...

I had the same issue about 1.5 years ago, where we thought all was well only to realize wifi0 was disabled, that turned out to be an LLDP bug!

so tired of the constant battle with this system.

Any ideas that dont involve resetting them back to factory?

thanks,
J.

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

dennisph — Thu, 26 May 2022 17:40:07 GMT

Stupid question but you have enough power available on the switch for the AP? At this point I am wondering if the access point is defective maybe the Wifi0 radio is bad. I probably had close to 100 defective AP650s when they first came out. The defect was usually that the access point would get caught in a boot loop.

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

DeVoID — Thu, 26 May 2022 17:48:19 GMT

Yessir, it has enough power for the AP's connected to it. Plus they were working. They worked until i made a template/radio profile change, and pushed that out to all 148 of those models (AP650-ah''s), and these two are the only ones with this going on. I cant believe that reverting back to template defaults didnt fix the issue.

I even went into one of the AP,'s that didnt have any clients connected and disabled wifi0, pushed the update, left it alone for 10 minutes (the XIQ reflected wifi0 as disabled), then enabled wifi0 pushed an update, and its back to wifi0 being disabled (via the cli command - show acsp ). Wifi1 is up on both those AP's and I have clients connected to the other AP). This is really nuts.

Seeing as disabling it and enabling it doesnt seem to work in the XIQ GUI, anyone know of the CLI command to disable the wifi0 interface and re-enabling it?

thanks,
Jason.

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

DeVoID — Thu, 26 May 2022 20:53:08 GMT

I might have solved this.

This is what I did:

I went into the AP, selected configure, wireless interfaces, and for wifi0 (and wifi1 for the heck of it) i selected the default radio profile. I pushed a delta but the orange audit tage stayed orange. so i did a full config push.

Heres where its weird. I saw that Auto was no longer there for that AP. So i go back into the AP, and it no longer has the default radio profile, it has the radio profile thats set in the AP template assigned in my network policy. Maybe it got that from my full config push... seems odd though, as i changed it at the device level.. not sure which takes precedence. But now im nto seeing auto for the power on wifi0. It was weird that ti seemed a a couple of delta pushes didnt work and it did take TWO full config pushes for it to "take".

Im going to try this on the other AP, this time im only going to change wifi0's radio profile to the default one and see what happens... Ill edit this to say what happens.

Thanks,
J

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

MalcolmS — Fri, 27 May 2022 04:12:32 GMT

Hi
If it helps, I have seen things/issues with other models that took a couple of full config & reboot tries before succeeding. So like Sam said, try with newer/different firmware and do a couple of full config & reboots before throwing in the towel & doing a reset!
Regards,
Malcolm

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

DeVoID — Fri, 27 May 2022 14:15:40 GMT

Ah, so its normal to take a few reboots, config pushes...

Well get this though, so what i did above worked, as you saw from the screen shot. I come in this morning and both of those bloody AP's are back to auto with wifi0 disabled! What the hell is going on!?!?

As im typing this, i selected both AP's and doing the revert to template defaults to see if that does anything.....

This damn AP's were working when i left yesterday...... this morning, both AP's wifi0 is back to disabled.... how is that even possible?

Ok they finished reverting.. one AP has the orange audit icon on, but wifi0 is enabled, while the other has all green icons, but wifi0 is disabled.... this is crazy..

DeVoiD

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

dennisph — Fri, 27 May 2022 14:30:14 GMT

I would just call support and RMA the devices and say radio wifi0 is bad. I would not say it is normal to have to push multiple complete configs but, I have spent a month or two arguing with half of aerohive or extreme before over config pushes failing or not pushing the complete config. they did fix it eventually though.

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

DeVoID — Fri, 27 May 2022 14:38:52 GMT

I totally understand where you are coming from. The only thing, is about a year ago we disabled 2.4ghz on wifi0 and enabled 5ghz on it. pushed it out to all AP's and thought it was working. It was only a few months later we got tons of complaints about wifi, and in checking it was discovered that wifi0 was disabled. Very similar to whats going on now.
That turned out to be LLDP not working in the config, and the crazy simple fix was to disable it the general settings, re-enable it and push the policy back out.

The thing this time, is that i have had that wifi0 interface working..... and then this morning they were back to disabled. Its odd that i did revert on both, and one did enable wifi0 and the other didnt.

It gets stranger. After that revert, and some time swearing, i did a full config push on both, which as you know restarts the AP's. They came back up, and wifi0 is enabled again, BUT i have the orange icon on the audit... how is that even possible? after doing a full config push?

The ones with yellow highlight are the ones im talking about.....

You can see it did a full config push as the uptime is less than 40 minutes...

Here is the CLI's:

BUT, notice POWER on J-4 is enabled, but J-7 its showing disabled.....

Hmmmmmmm.... Although that could be because J7 really is set to Auto, which would be odd, as the radio profile im using is set to 10db on both wifi0 and wifi1.... so maybe power enabled means you have set a manual power, and disabled means you set it to auto.... im just guessing...

Both are still showing that orange audit icon, even though ive pushed both types of config.

The audit tab for J-4 shows this:

And the audit tab for J-7 shows this:

odd that they dont have the exact same text... and as for J4, whats the about MODIFIED, only for the next line to say DELETED....?

Something is fundamentally messed up.... I think there is some kind of conflict in the configuration.... maybe the policy telling it one thing, but somewhere else its being told something else.... I do have classification rules, but i check to make sure i didnt have the AP's in two different classification rules... you know, like turn this off in one of them, and turn it on in a different classification rule..

I do need to clean that up, as i kind of went backwards into how i set them up.

Now that both AP's wifi0 interface is enabled, im just going to clear the orange audit (click on Ignore), and after i clean up my AP templates, radio profiles, and delete two of the three classification rules, see what happens with those two AP's interfaces...

I think its that config conflict, and not faulty hardware...... dont you think?

Thanks,
Jason.

Re: Interface shows wrong value for transmit Power

DeVoID — Fri, 27 May 2022 17:22:43 GMT

UPDATE: I went to the physical location, and this is what that told me.

While XIQ is showing both interfaces as enabled, and transmission power set to 12 db (thats what id set them too), the white light is flashing, which means that wifi0 is in fact DISABLED... or at least not working.

So clearly something is buggy here and not being properly reported. I know that blinking white light all too well.. .that goes back to a previous post here, and the onyl reason we found out that wifi0 wasnt working and it turned out to be an LLDP bug.

so..... I guess ill factory reset one of them next week (cant do it today or monday), and see if wifi0 is in fact dead. Which might be the case. its sad that you cant really trust what you are seeing in the XIQ though....

Have a good weekend.

Thanks,
J