Alcatel Unleashed

Hello guys,
A weird one happened to me today and I'm still trying to figure out what else I can do to solve this issue.

I have a customer with a cluster of both 1201 and 1101 (around 50 total), and the cluster is running version 4.0.3.4080!
Today we tried to upgrade them to 4.0.8.16 and while all the 1201 models took the upgrade and came back up perfectly, all the 1101's we tried to upgrade afterwards are all stuck on 'joining'! No matter what I do, I can't get them to join in...
I tried rebooting all the APs, I also tried shutting the POE on those APs trying to join, rebooting all others and then re-enabling the POE on those and they are still stuck in 'joining', and I tried a few more random things at the time. Seems to be only with the 1101 models as all the 1201 models all joined the cluster just fine after the upgrade. I had to downgrade them back and now I have a cluster with all 1101 running 4.0.3 and all 1201 models running 4.0.8
Why are we upgrading? Because all the main conference/meeting rooms are going to get 1411 models in the next few weeks and we wanted those APs in the latest version because of all the wifi6/6E performance corrections.

Any tips? I'll take anything at this point!

Hi Cristek,

Have you tried with firmware 4.8 MR1? Personally, I would advise against mixing different wifi generations in the same cluster. Each AP will broadcast its capabilities in the beacon frame. Wifi 6/6e clients might prefer connecting to a wifi 6/6e accesspoint even though a wifi 5 accesspoint has a better RSSI/SNR.

You could use the following CLI commands to check the cluster process:
show_cluster << to check which AP's are seen as members
cluster_mgt –x show=self <<to check role of ap in cluster
cluster_mgt –x show=pvc <<which ap is pvc in cluster?
ps | grep cluster << to check cluster processes, there should be one cluster_mgt and one cluster_cor processes running

Hope this helps,

Regards,

wifi113

Hello,
Thanks for your message, I got around it by using 4.0.7.4053 instead, and it's been working perfectly ever since.
It might be something that gets fixed in MR1 for 4.0.8, sure, but "if it ain't broken, don't fix it"

Hi Cristek,

Good to read you managed to resolve the issue. I haven't tested/reproduced your issue nor do I know if 4.0.8 MR1 resolves it. I was only guessing. Looks like it was in the right direction ;-P. B.t.w. I totally agree with your quote.

Regards,

wifi113