No available Channels on cAP but CAPsMAN is ignorant

Hi Guys,

it seems that since I upgraded to ROS 7.13, my CAPsMAN (RB5009) will often not show an error with one of the remote cAPs related to “no available channels”. So when I look at CAPsMAN, everything looks good but in reality one of the cAPs is actually not running due to the above error message. When I look at the cAP, it tells me that the interface is managed by CAPsMAN, but there are no available channels - which Is actually what I’d like (and expect) to see on the CAPsMAN. (This has happened on cAP AX as well as wAP AC.)

Am I doing anything wrong? I seem to remember that CAPsMAN used to show a problematic status like that, but apparently no longer so. Any ideas what I might be looking at here?

(The channel might actually be blocked due to DFS, so I’m not debating the truthfulness of the error, I’m just annoyed that CAPsMAN doesn’t show it.)

So am I the only one who has experienced this? Perhpas I should open a support ticket for this behavior?

Might be misconfiguration, can you share your config?

/export file=anynameyoulike

Remove serial and any other private info en share your output between code tags by using the </> button.

Most obvious would be setting a 2.4GHz frequency to a 5GHz radio (or vice versa).

Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear: I configure CAPsMAN and cAP. WiFi starts working. A day later CApSMAN still shows no error but cAP displays the above status. Reboot cAP → works again.

I suppose the channel gets blocked due to DFS (I only configure a single 80 MHz channel), but that is okay. What’s not okay is the fact that CAPsMAN doesn’t show the error and pretends that the cAP is running AP normally.

Are you sure the issue was not there with previous versions ?
How is your frequency selection now ? Dynamic or static ?
Just for test, already tried a fixed frequency in low range band (UNII-1 range, avoiding dfs) ? Simply to narrow down the problem a bit.

I always use static frequencies (single channel) due to a crowded neighbourhood.

Let’s put it this way: I did encounter “no available channels” before, but hen I saw the error in CAPsMAN as well. Unfortunately, I am not sure whether that was with WIFIWAVE2 already or still on the previous CAPsMAN version.

At any rate, I don’t think this happened with, say, 7.12 (using WIFIWAVE2) before, with the exact same channels in use for the same APs. Perhaps DFS detection has become more sensitive in 7.13?

If I set another non-DFS channel, the issue doesn’t appear (at least not for a couple of days), so it is probably related to DFS after all. However, I would expect CAPsMAN to show any down APs (for whatever reason), wouldn’t you?

Yes, I agree it should show at least the correct status.

Maybe best to recreate the error-situation and when it happens, create supout.rif and sent it to support so they can investigate further.

Yep, I opened a ticket yesterday. Let’s see what the almighty support gurus will say. :wink:

Got a reply today that I should try out 7.13.2 as there were changes in regulatory settings both in .1 and .2. Test in progress …

Quick update: Issue still persists with 7.13.2 (and 7.13.3). Response from MikroTik:

It indeed seems like the issue could arise after a DFS event.

They’re now looking into it in order to hopefully provide a fix soon. Just so you know. :slight_smile:

Could be related: http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/5ghz-channels-disappeared-on-hap-ax2/172629/1

Hi Guys,
after updating to the latest release 7.13.4, it looks like the behavior has changed slightly (for the worse):

cAPs will not silently stop operating anymore but - if there is no free channel available based on the configuration - seemingly choose an arbitary channel (one that is NOT configured for the cAP). To make matters worse, it looks like multiple cAPs will choose the same (unwanted) channel.

This is really getting to a point where it’s unusable. :frowning:

Just wanted to keep you updated …

I’m suffering from this issue, too. I moved to wave2 recently on my two cap acs. Used capsman before this and now the new wifi capsman. I had my 5g channel set manually, it was working great for years, and also worked fine for some time after the switch to wifi2. However, recently, potentially after the last update on all devices, I regularly get “no available channel” error from the APs, the capsman isn’t showing the error, it’s only seen when logging in to the CAPs themselves. Registration is only on the 2g interfaces.

I tried removing the manual channel selection for it to choose one automatically, and it did, but the no available channel error persists.

A reboot of both CAPs helped. But I had to reboot them already twice last week, all different issues with the wifi interfaces. Once, I had my 5g wifi interfaces not registering as slave interfaces in the bridge! A reboot helped… I was so happy with wave2, with FT finally in place, but now I’m less thrilled

It was too early to celebrate :confused: Now I don’t see channel errors, but I also don’t see my 5g network! Scanning with my mac wifi utility doesn’t see the 5g networks, but both CAPs are showing their 5g interfaces as running

OK I may have figured out what the problem was. Wifi (the new one) is losing configuration settings due to a webfig bug. When I open a config in webfig, it doesn’t display the correct section config, and when I save it, it apparently overwrites. So, my 5ghz config has lost its security setting - obviously, I haven’t removed it deliberately. It’s also lost the channel association.

I had to fix it all with a command line configuration via the terminal. Now back to my original wifi channel