Aironet 600 AP interruptions

Question

Hi All,
Fairly new to the Office-Extend arena, but I have two Air602 OEAP units for testing. Overall functionality is great but I do have one slight annoyance.
While i'm connected to the "Corp" ssid, the one pushed from my WLC, it will occasionally drop my connection. My Wireless NIC will sit there and sent ARP broadcasts and get no response, this lasts for about 30-60 seconds and then everything will reconnect like nothing happened.
This is only an issue on my Office Extend AP, my LWAPP in the office dont do this to me. I have verified that the problem is not linked to just my PC. I have another laptop that I tried at home and got the same behviour.
I did a packet capture during the "silent" period and i see my wireless adapter sending packets, but getting no responses. The controller doesn't see the Ap disconnecting nor do my clients disassociate or see the SSID disappear.
I've verified it's not my internet connection at my home because I had a client on the "local" SSID on the AP as well as the "Corp" SSID, the corp ssid client lost connection while the local SSID client maintained internet access without any interruption.
My 5508 WLC is on my "internal" network behind an ASA running 8.4(3). I thought maybe the firewall was an issue so I tried another non-Cisco firewall as well and got the same behavior.
WLC: Cisco 5508 7.2.103.0
AP Info:
Inventory Information
AP Type     CAPWAP
AP Model     AIR-OEAP602I-A-K9
OS Version     5.22.84.6
I dont see an OS upgrade available under CCO downloads for the AP. Any ideas where I should start to look for this?. Thanks.

Answer 1

I'm seeing a similar issue running the 7.3.101.0 code.  However, it's only happening (or being reported) for mac users.  And it can go well beyond 30-60 seconds.  It can go on indefinitely sometimes until I disconnect and reconnect to the SSID.  My SSID does show connected, but similar to your experience, no arp responses from the default gateway.  I did a packet capture to see this.  Interestingly, not long after starting the capture I see some EAPOL packets come in and suddenly it starts working.  So would seem that 802.1x is blocking the port and for some reason I'm not re-authenticating.  I tried disabling session time out, but that didn't solve it.
Here's the packet trace where it's not working then suddenly starts working:
10:33:44.375186 ARP, Request who-has 10.213.15.254 tell 10.213.13.255, length 28
10:33:45.378338 ARP, Request who-has 10.213.15.254 tell 10.213.13.255, length 28
10:33:48.384173 ARP, Request who-has 10.213.15.254 tell 10.213.13.255, length 28
10:33:49.387264 ARP, Request who-has 10.213.15.254 tell 10.213.13.255, length 28
10:33:52.394868 ARP, Request who-has 10.213.15.254 tell 10.213.13.255, length 28
10:34:03.547499 IP6 fe80::9227:e4ff:fef6:488d.5353 > ff02::fb.5353: 0 [2q] A (QM)? 31c80bc3a6a39ce144832a45cea636.local. AAAA (QM)? 31c80bc3a6a39ce144832a45cea636.local. (60)
10:34:03.641969 IP6 fe80::9227:e4ff:fef6:488d.5353 > ff02::fb.5353: 0*- [0q] 1/0/1 (Cache flush) AAAA fd31:c80b:c3a6:a39c:e144:832a:45ce:a636 (96)
10:34:09.340188 IP 10.213.13.255.17500 > 10.213.15.255.17500: UDP, length 134
10:34:13.421334 ARP, Request who-has 10.213.15.254 tell 10.213.13.255, length 28
10:34:13.589279 EAPOL key (3) v1, len 135
10:34:13.589309 EAPOL key (3) v2, len 117
10:34:13.651386 EAPOL key (3) v1, len 95
10:34:13.651420 EAPOL key (3) v2, len 151
10:34:14.423609 ARP, Request who-has 10.213.15.254 tell 10.213.13.255, length 28
10:34:14.473543 ARP, Reply 10.213.15.254 is-at 00:00:5e:00:01:01, length 46