I have direct experience with what Ryan described. A couple days after X-mas when there were very few people in our building, I lost connectivity on my iPhone, 2 Mac Book Pro (different vintages), and a wireless Avaya desk phone. At the same time an engineer across the hall lost connectivity on a Windows laptop and his android phone, plus and Aruba Cape Sensor experienced the same thing. On the clients involved there was no indication of there being a problem and they appeared to be connected, just no IP connectivity. I did see that the Cape sensor roamed from the AP where it had -62 signal to one that had -89 and that is when we lost connectivity and 3 minutes later everyone roamed back and we again had connectivity.
So as Ryan described, no common drivers, we still see the SSID, we just get no traffic and it clears with no intervention. Amel Caldwell From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> on behalf of "Turner, Ryan H" <rhtur...@email.unc.edu> Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> Date: Thursday, January 9, 2020 at 8:51 AM To: "WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU" <WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Who has transitioned away from Aruba, and why? This isn’t the problem. The drivers are updated. Clients see the ssid. Just periodically they stop communicating. Ryan Turner Head of Networking, ITS The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill +1 919 274 7926 Mobile +1 919 445 0113 Office On Jan 9, 2020, at 11:48 AM, Martin Reynolds <mreyn...@swarthmore.edu> wrote: Not sure if this could be of help but the issues with the 515 and 535 Aruba APs we use was driver related to the 802.11ax code that is on the AP's. This is not an Aruba specific issue but affects other vendors as well. The following link is for the updated Intel drivers. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000054799/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html In our case users could not see the ESSIDs at all where 515 APs were installed but could where other model of AP's (2xx and 3xx)were installed. By using a different adapter from what is installed in the hardware (example USB-and not Intel) that allowed us to see the ESSIDs Thanks, Martin On Thu, Jan 9, 2020 at 11:40 AM David Morton <dmor...@uw.edu<mailto:dmor...@uw.edu>> wrote: Ryan, we have been experiencing some of the very same issues. Since installing 515s and resulting 8.5.x code in our offices (always our first step to any migration) we too have experienced unexplained periods of no connectivity. In most or all the cases I’ve personally experienced, I believe that I remain connected at an 802.11 standpoint but will have that 30 seconds to a couple of minutes of no IP connectivity. We have now deployed 515s and 8.5.x in one of our residence halls so I am concerned about their experience as well. Just before the holiday break we had a series of very high-profile outages that impacted our students leading up to and during finals week. The issue got so bad that our CIO had to issue a letter to students explaining the problem and what we are doing about it. This is the first time that this level of communication was needed in my 15 years at the UW using Aruba. We too are a heavy Juniper shop and have recently received a MIST demo kit. We haven’t done anything with it yet due to lack of resources, but if things continue on the current path we may give it a more serious look. David David Morton Director, Network & Telecom Design/Architecture University of Washington dmorton @uw.edu<http://uw.edu> tel 206.221.7814 PS I am currently on medical leave so if you wish to reply off-list, please direct it to Amel Caldwell, amelc@ uw.edu<http://uw.edu> On Jan 9, 2020, at 8:15 AM, Turner, Ryan H <rhtur...@email.unc.edu<mailto:rhtur...@email.unc.edu>> wrote: All: We’ve been an Aruba shop for a very long time and have around 10,000 access points. While every relationship with vendors have their ups and downs, my frustration with the Aruba is finally peaking to the point that I am considering making the enormous move to choose a different vendor. The biggest reason is with the 8.X code train, and bugs that we just don’t consider appropriate to use in production. It has been one thing after the other, and my extremely talented and qualified Network Architect (Keith Miller) might as well be on the Aruba payroll as much work as he has been doing for them to solve bugs. Just when we think we have one fixed, another one crops up. The big one as of late is with 515s running 8.5 code train. We have them deployed in one of our IT buildings. Periodically, people that are connected to these APs in the 5G band will stop working. To the user, they are browsing a site, then it becomes unresponsive. If they are on their phone, they will disconnect from wifi and everything works fine on cell. Nothing makes an 802.11 network look worse than switching to cell and seeing a problem resolve. Normally, if the users disconnect then reconnect, their problems will go ahead (but I think they end up connecting in the 2.4G band). We’ve been working on this problem with them for months. It always seems as though we have to prove there is a real issue. I’m fed up with it. We are a sophisticated shop. If we have a problem, 9 times out of 10 when we bring it to the vendor, it is a real problem. I’m extra frustrated that due to issues we’ve seen in ResNet on the 8.3X train that we don’t want to abandon our 6 train on main campus. To Aruba’s credit, we purchased around 1,000 515s last year (I think around February). When they could not get good code to support them on, Aruba bought back half of them. I asked for them to buy back half because I thought for sure with the 315s that we would have instead, the issues would be fixed by the time the 315s ran out. Not looking to be the case. So, with that rant over, we are seriously considering looking to move away from Aruba (unless they get their act together really soon). There are other bugs I’m not even mentioning here. For those of you that made the switch to another vendor, I would be curious how long the honeymoon lasted, what were your motivators, and were you happy with the overall results? Of course, this is a great opportunity to plug your vendor. As I see it, we have 3 choices…. Something from Cisco (we had Cisco long ago and dumped them for bugs), something from Extreme (we are a huge Extreme shop so this makes sense), something from Juniper (Mist). Thanks, Ryan Turner Head of Networking The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill +1 919 445 0113 Office +1 919 274 7926 Mobile r...@unc.edu<mailto:r...@unc.edu> ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community
