Problems with old WLAN Clients after changing the WLAN infrastructure

[Anonymous]

Hello,

we switched our wlan infrastructure at one of our warehouses from old Motorola Symbol Aps using a WEP SSID to our new wlan infrastructure using the XIQ Cloud, with primarily AP410 and a PPSK SSID, using one PPSK for every forklift in the warehouse. (They use an old Win7 embedded OS).

After the switch we noticed several disconnects within the Logistics Software we are using on the terminals to manage the warehouse. We Software keeps losing the connection to the server for a few seconds (from 2-3 seconds to 15-20) and then reconnects. It seems like it’s happening all over the warehouse, even at locations where i can see with our other devices that the wlan connections seems good and stable. What i’ve noticed is that it looks like some sort of roaming problem to me. It seems to me like it is some sort of roaming problem. Maybe the terminals take too long to roam between the aps or having problems with PPSK authentication?

I checked the client monitor to check the clients and noticed a poor client health. Seeing many issues displayed as “The client is configured with an incorrect static IP address or gateway.” Which in fact, seems not to be correct. The forklifts are configured with a static ip, dns and gateway (we dont use DHCP in this VLAN). So what is the cause of this error? Could the be also a hint to our main wlan problem? 

If you need any more information, dont hesitate to ask. I appreciate every help. 🙂

[Anonymous]

Hello,

thanks for your response.

1. Motorola Symbol APs 5131, with a / b / g
2. We had our reseller do a WLAN Coverage. 
3. Average RSSI around 50-55 / SNR 40-45 → Something else i noticed is the Client Health. Most of the forklifts have a Radio Health of 100, but the Application Health is 0. What does Application Health mean?
4. How can i find this out? You mean if we have APs that could cover the area of another APs if it goes down?
5. 11Mbit min. in 2,4 Ghz. The Clients cant use 5 Ghz.
6. Not yet, but indeed, they are pretty old. (2013 i think) The problem on this side is that my colleagues who are responsible for the terminals said that this would cause a major downtime and hard work, so it would only be one of the last things we should do.
   
   
   Can you tell me something about this “The client is configured with an incorrect static IP address or gateway”? Have you ever heard of this error? 
   
   
   I appreciate your assistance! 🙂

[Ovais_Qayyum]

Hi Florian, 

The PPSK shouldn’t really cause issues with roaming if the coverage is good. Since there are not many details available, I would like to start off by asking you some questions to better understand the environment:

1- Which Motorola/Symbol AP models did you replace? were those 802.11b/g APs?

2- How the AP replacement was done, was it simply a one-to-one replacement of APs or you conducted a site survey and then determined the no. of 410 APs required. This is important because a one-to-one replacement of older APs often results in such issues due to a difference in 802.11 compliance regulations, antenna gains and patterns, etc. You may think that the coverage would remain the same, but mostly it's not. 

3- What are the RF stats on the forklift clients? average RSSI and SNR when they move about the coverage area.

4- Is there a good coverage overlap between APs, say 20%-25%?

5- What PHY rate are you using on the new APs, e.g. 802.11 b/g/n/ac/ax?

6- Did you try updating the driver on the wireless clients? 

Regards,

Ovais