Tech Forum

gbekmezian, no idea if this might be a clue, but our 881W is in a quiet place (stake office). What I observed is that I was able to connect to it using my phone. I was able to download the updated Gospel Library - no problems. I turned off WiFi on my phone, and then a few minutes later, turned it back on again. It couldn't connect. I was sitting less then 4' away and in the same room.

I don't know if the problem just hit at that time, or if the problem has to do with RE-connecting. But I thought I'd mention it. This was at about 2:00 - 2:30 PM MST.

aebrown wrote:

In one building we have a new 881W (S/N FTX160986BR) with 1041n access points, where we did experience significant problems with wireless connections on both December 30 and Jan 6. On Jan 6, at about 1:30pm MST, the problem seemed to resolve itself, and people started being able to obtain and keep a wireless connection. Throughout all of these problems, the wired connections were just fine.

Thank you for the detailed information.

Just wanted to share our information in case it helps with troubleshooting.

FTX151104WS - Stake Center - First week, the wifi SSID's weren't visible, only wired connections worked. Last week, SSID's were visible, however unable to connect, continually prompted for security key. Firewall has not been rebooted.
FTX160886H1 - Leavenworth - First week, the wifi SSID's weren't visible, only wired connections worked. Last week, SSID's were visible, however unable to connect, continually prompted for security key, firewall was rebooted on Sunday, and wifi started working again.
FTX16186UP - Easy St. - First week, the wifi SSID's weren't visible, only wired connections worked. Last week, SSID's were visible, however unable to connect, continually prompted for security key. Firewall has not been rebooted.
FTX153384G0 - Maiden Ln. - First week, the wifi SSID's weren't visible, only wired connections worked. Last week, SSID's were visible, however unable to connect, continually prompted for security key. Firewall has not been rebooted.

Try two things
1, Make certain the 881W is configured for at least 200 DHCP addresses. Call the Global Help Center and they can do it remotely.
2. Install additional access points. Access points get overloaded and quit operating.

One more I forgot to add to my last post. Teachers should, where possible, download videos and materials from the Church web sites and store them locally on media such as USB memory sticks or USB hard drives. Download the video in the highest resolution available. 1080P60 is a good choice. Playback should use either a tablet/laptop or use a Western Digital TV live streaming media player - available from Amazon for about $90. The media player will connect to a projector, plasma TV or legacy TV. Don't forget to provide good audio - I use a Jambox which provides excellent sound for a classroom. If a plasma TV is used, then the HDMI connection provides both audio and video.

lholmstrom wrote:Download the video in the highest resolution available. 1080P60 is a good choice.

I disagree. Unless the display device is 1080 and your playback device can do 1080, 720 is perfectly adequate. Smaller file, faster download and uses fewer resources to playback and down-convert on the fly.

Even then, 720 is higher then what a standard definition TV can display, but 360 is below that. So 720 is a good choice.

Where are you getting the 1080 versions? The highest resolution I found for the Come Follow Me videos was 480p.

EDIT: Nevermind. I was only thinking about the youth videos when, of course, the church web site offers tons of other stuff for download, much of it available at the 1080 resolution. But it's probably not "1080P60," which would suggest a 60-frames-per-second presentation. If you're still using a laptop with a screen resolution of, say, 1280 by 800, then 720 would be a better match. But if you have a monitor that can handle 1080 and a media player that's made for HDTV anyway, then I would also say there's no harm in going for the highest resolution possible (especially if you're downloading the large files at home when you have the time for it).

Of course, the best thing to do is try it out in advance and make sure you've solved all of the issues before your valuable class time. You'll discover which video resolution works best. Then, as long as the best quality works well, go for it!

JeffTurgeon wrote:After speaking with one of higher level techs in field operations I was provided with the following information.
...
I am so glad that we crawled through the attics and fished hard wire drops to all offices and key locations to provided hard-wired reliability. Hopefully your Stake did the same.

I am reposting the update I posted to another thread yesterday:

I wanted to take a moment and provide a quick update to the community. We have made a number of configuration changes to the wireless infrastructure and have decreased DHCP lease times to 30 minutes. We are optimistic the changes we made will alleviate a majority of the issues experienced over the past two Sundays. Additionally, we are keeping a much closer eye on client and AP counts and will respond immediately upon any indication of a problem.
The vendor is actively engaged and all escalations have been put in place proactively to ensure the shortest possible root cause identification and subsequent resolution.

I appreciate the feedback provided by this forum and am particularly grateful for those who were able to respond to my request for information.

JeffTurgeon wrote:I am so glad that we crawled through the attics and fished hard wire drops to all offices and key locations to provided hard-wired reliability. Hopefully your Stake did the same.

As for the above, it's always sound advice to minimize the potential impact of failure.

Have a great weekend!

lholmstrom wrote:Try two things
1, Make certain the 881W is configured for at least 200 DHCP addresses. Call the Global Help Center and they can do it remotely.
2. Install additional access points. Access points get overloaded and quit operating.

Please keep in mind, the standard access points being used are the Cisco 1041 which only operate on the 2.4GHz spectrum and support 802.11b/g/n. Once you get beyond 3 access points in a building, you will start to experience co-channel interference as there are only 3 non-overlapping channels available in the spectrum. The bottom line is, unless the APs are far enough from each other they will likely cause more problems than the value they will add.

George

Once you get beyond 3 access points in a building, you will start to experience co-channel interference as there are only 3 non-overlapping channels available in the spectrum.

That is the beauty of a unified wifi system (controller based,) such as the one the Church has deployed. The radio resource management's role is to monitor the radio spectrum and adjust itself accordingly. It assigns channels based on least congestion, and also adjusts it's power to avoid interference with neighboring WAPs. I have a 2 floor building with more than 75 1041's installed and it works flawlessly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_resource_management