881W Issues

Discussions about Internet service providers (ISPs), the Meetinghouse Firewall, wired and wireless networking, usage, management, and support of Meetinghouse Internet
brogers
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Re: 881W Issues

#11

Post by brogers »

russellhltn wrote:
aebrown wrote:Yes, we are seeing the connections getting dropped frequently. And we have 200+ addresses available via DHCP and this problem was happening with the first ward to meet in the building, so it's not an issue of running out of IP addresses. Besides, the problem doesn't act at all like running out of IP addresses -- we connect, but then the connection drops, and then it reconnects a few seconds later. The signal is strong, so that's not the problem either.
Can someone run a ipconfig command and see how long the IP lease is for? I've had problems in my home network when I've set the lease too short. It ends up killing the connection until it can renew.
Here's what I get with ipconfig /all: (some fields "redacted")

Windows IP Configuration
Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : LU-179922
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : ldschurch.org

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : ldschurch.org
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.xxx.xxx.xxx
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.128
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.xxx.xxx.xxx
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.xxx.xxx.xxx
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 8.8.8.8
4.2.2.2
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Monday, December 31, 2012 8:40:57 AM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, December 31, 2012 9:10:57 AM
lajackson
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Re: 881W Issues

#12

Post by lajackson »

brogers wrote: Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Monday, December 31, 2012 8:40:57 AM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, December 31, 2012 9:10:57 AM
In this particular case, the member who received this IP address would lose it 30 minutes later. Does this correspond with the experience members were having?

I wonder if there may have been a problem in recycling the IP addresses after the leases expired, or if the (member) devices themselves immediately tried to renew the lease, and the network got confused.
russellhltn
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Re: 881W Issues

#13

Post by russellhltn »

lajackson wrote:
brogers wrote: Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Monday, December 31, 2012 8:40:57 AM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, December 31, 2012 9:10:57 AM
In this particular case, the member who received this IP address would lose it 30 minutes later.
Correct. As I understand it, normally a device will attempt to extend the lease before it expires. If the lease expires first, then you'll lose connection until it's renewed.

I don't know all the details about "pre-renewing", but I have to wonder if the way it's implemented it fails to work when the lease time is real short.

I suspect the lease was shorted in order to free up IPs when the members of the first ward goes home.
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aebrown
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Re: 881W Issues

#14

Post by aebrown »

lajackson wrote:In this particular case, the member who received this IP address would lose it 30 minutes later. Does this correspond with the experience members were having?
Not in the case of my building. We lost connection much quicker than 30 minutes after obtaining an IP address -- sometimes less than one minute later.
russellhltn
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Re: 881W Issues

#15

Post by russellhltn »

Any pattern on what kind of devices were having problems? I know there's been issues with how Apple has implemented standards in the past. I'm wondering if it's some kind of interaction with specific devices.
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aebrown
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Re: 881W Issues

#16

Post by aebrown »

russellhltn wrote:Any pattern on what kind of devices were having problems? I know there's been issues with how Apple has implemented standards in the past. I'm wondering if it's some kind of interaction with specific devices.
I was having problems with my Android phone, one ward executive secretary had a problem with his iPhone, and another ward executive secretary had a problem with a Windows 7 laptop.

That's a broad enough sampling of devices that I really doubt that this issue is related to specific devices.
heyring
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Re: 881W Issues

#17

Post by heyring »

I would agree 100%. We too had the same issue and I received multiple calls. I took the 1st step of logging into tm.lds.org and saw that all 4 of our firewalls were reported to be online. This immediately told me that it had to ba a Salt Lake/Server issue. But a heads up (even system generated) email saying there was an outage would be a big win.
techgy
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Re: 881W Issues

#18

Post by techgy »

My Bishopric had asked me to take part in an overview of lds.org that was scheduled for this past Sunday. I was to take the PHD and a member of the Bishopric would handle the Relief Society. On Saturday I went to the building to set some things up and found the WiFi down. I rebooted the 881W and managed to get it back up. A short time later I left for home.

When I arrived for Church on Sunday the WiFi was down again. Another reset of the 881W brought it back. After Sacrament it was down again - another reset. 10-15 minutes later it was back down.

Fortunately for us a member of the Bishopric had a laptop with an AirCard that didn't require our WiFi, so we put everyone together into the Chapel and managed to complete the overview. Since we were the 2nd ward into the building I suspected that we may have been short of IP addresses, but that didn't explain why it was off on Saturday.

From what I've read in this thread it sounds exactly like what was driving us nuts on Sunday.
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johnshaw
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Re: 881W Issues

#19

Post by johnshaw »

I think we should rely on those who called the GSC during the events and were told that the Church services were not available at multiple times during the day. I called on Monday, twice, to the GSC to see if I could get answers and received confirmation on one call that the Church experienced issues on Sunday. For all we know it was Sat/Sun as well.

The way this stuff works is that the Wireless Devices (881W and 1041N) all talk to the same type of Cisco Wireless Controller. Each device is typically assigned a Primary and Secondary controller, so that when a controller fails the backup picks up like nothing happened. Well, a common practice to save on costs is to load up the secondary controllers so that you might have a single secondary controller for multiple primary controllers because you're expectation is that they don't fail that often. It is also common that mistakes are made and a secondary isn't configured, or the redundancy pattern is off loading up particular secondaries. There is a hard limit to the number of devices a controller will handle as well. It's my guess that something in the Church's design or architecture didn't account for the particular scenario that we encountered or there was mis-configuration. I've seen this many times in my professional work. This is why a particular Floor of a building can have the wireless go out while the rest of the building is ok... or why a particular Meetinghouse can have the issue but others do not.

What I think we can say with confidence is that this was not related to a DHCP IP address problem localized to the meetinghouse - but that SLC had issues.
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techgy
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Re: 881W Issues

#20

Post by techgy »

The following is a response I received after posting a note to the Feedback link.
After some investigating, it turned out to be a controller problem. This problem has been fixed now. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Your feedback is appreciated.
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