Frequent wireless disconnections occurring since upgrade to 10.21.01.0065

[Steve_Ballantyn]

I apologize for the redundant question. It seems like "clients disconnecting" is a common topic. But I am starting a new one, because it seems that every situation is different.

I have a C5210 and a bunch of 3825i AP's all over my hospital. Just before Christmas I upgraded to the latest firmware, 10.21.01.0065. Since then I am getting complaints from users (across the board) that they are frequently getting dropped from WiFi. After it happens they are easily able to reconnect and all is well. But it's driving them mad as they will be in mid-sentence documenting in their various applications and then it sort of freezes up and KAPOW! Connection lost!

There is nothing newer to upgrade to. And I suppose I could downgrade to see if the problems goes away. But I would rather seek out the source of the problem and fix it. Especially if it's just something wacky in my configuration.

I plan on putting in a call and opening a ticket on Monday morning with support. But in the meantime - does anyone have any ideas for me? I use Netsight and Purview, and I have all of these logs and diagnostic data at my disposal, but I am not really sure where to start. I suppose the first question is - does anyone else have this issue with this firmware?

[Steve_Ballantyn]

Extreme Networks is off the hook for this issue.

Yesterday I took one of these laptops and installed Windows 10 from the product disc. I let it install Windows updates. Then I took it home. I installed Chrome. I started a continuous ping. And then I started watching a YouTube video. And BOOM, connection dropped. Same messages in the logs and everything. And this is in my *home*, on my residential grade TP-Link access point!

I have emailed my support guy at EN and let him know that this is officially "not your problem" but invited him to keep the ticket open if he is curious as to what we figure out. But I am not going to waste any more Extreme Networks resources on this one.

Later last night I installed all of the HP drivers (and none of the newer Intel drivers). Then I opened up YouTube and started up music videos and went to bed. Six hours later, it hadn't dropped at all.

So thinking back, I don't know that I ever tried installing the driver from the HP site. What was installed on the laptops when I started was a very old driver that was pre-installed. What I installed later was the very latest from Intel. What I am running with now is a "new-ish" driver, numbered 18.33.3.2 and dated 5/3/2016.

More to come once this has run a few days ...

[Steve_Ballantyn]

Another update on this issue - the users continue to get disconnected. My support guy at Extreme has been feeding me with ideas on adjustments and some ways to get better logging. Still, I can't ignore the fact that there are a lot of users of laptops that shipped with Intel Dual-Band wireless NIC's who have this same exact issue ... and some of these date back to 2012.

To try some Intel community advice, this morning I disabled the a/n/ac radio usage on all cards, disabled the "allow this device to sleep" on the drivers power options tab, and also disabled all power saving of the PCI-e slot in the OS's Power Options. Seems kind of lousy to castrate my users to lower speeds. But honestly, they don't need the bandwidth. All they run is a single web-based app, and an in-house instant messenger.

So far - I haven't seen a drop all morning. I am cautiously optimistic as I await user feedback and hawk the event logs!

[Steve_Ballantyn]

Frank, can you tell me what NIC's are installed to your HP laptops? I don't think there are any issues with Broadcom/Realtek NIC's, only Intel. And all of ours are Intel, sadly.

[Frank11]

We are a school that runs 10.21.01.0065 since release with the same 3825i AP's. 1300 clients with a mixture of iPAD's and HP laptops. We have disabled the 2.4ghz range and only run 5ghz with 40Mhz channels.
No issues or dropouts at all.
If you want a detailed view of our settings let me know if that may help you.