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Wireless - Location Issues

Wireless - Location Issues

Ryan_Reb
New Contributor
Hello. Our current setup is we have two CS-4110 wireless controllers that manage all of our AP's. They are a mix of AP3610's and AP3715i's in 20 different building locations across the city. Each location has it's own DHCP scope. We have 3 wireless SSID networks that are configured via tagged vlan traffic that all route back to a central DHCP server. One is a guest network that gives only webpage access and then two enterprise networks that give access to our network (one giving N level wireless and the other still on G). The two Enterprise SSID's pull addresses from the same scope and the Guest is on it's own. All SSID's are names the same at each location with the same psk's. This means we can travel to any site and have access to the wireless network.

We are starting to run into an issue in our school district where we take a device to one location, like a school, it connects no problem to the network but when if we travel to a different site, the device (like my windows 7 pro laptop and my iphone 5s) see the networks but will not join automatically. They just sit trying to connect. However, here's the weird thing, if we join the device to our Guest network and then back to the Enterprise, then it works. We've tried doing a ipconfig release, tried rebooting the device, powering completely off and even deleting the wireless sites from the computer and then rejoining for the first time. It will not join the Enterprise network until we manually tell it to join Guest, allow it to connect and then tell it to join Enterprise, then it works.

This issue started mostly with Apple devices like iPads and iPhones but now it's starting to affect Windows 7 laptops. We've checked our DHCP scopes and DNS records but can't find any issues.

We'd really appreciate suggestions. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you.

11 REPLIES 11

Ronald_Dvorak
Honored Contributor
here a slide from the 7.41 knowledge transfer - sometimes pictures make more sense then words....

eeafe1f4a1ce441895ce7e2f2f5d29c0_RackMultipart20140125-1742-18qvlqx-interWLANroaming_inline.png

Ronald_Dvorak
Honored Contributor
Hi Ryan,

I'm not 100% sure as the information you've provided don't include all the required data but I might know what the "problem" is.

It's a feature called "Permit Inter-WLAN Service Roaming".

It's enabled per default (VNS configuration -> WLAN service -> advanced...).
The basic function is that if you move between different WLAN services with the same SSID & security settings that the client keeps his IP and role = topology.

So if you use bridge@AP tag#100 in building#1 and move to building#2 which uses bridge@AP tag#200 within 30minutes (= the default idle timer) your client still will send the traffic on VLAN#100 as the client session is still in the EWC table and there was no new authentication.
If that VLAN isn't configured on the port in building#2 the traffic is dropped and you'll never get to the DHCP server.

In your case the function isn't that helpful so if you disabled it on all your WLAN services your clients should be able to move between sites without further problems.

Kind regards,
Ron
GTM-P2G8KFN