Networks·41,454 discussions

WiFi access points reboot every day at the same time

Tags: Networking

I have four WiFi access points connected to a POE switch. They work fine, except that every day at exactly 9pm all four antennas reboot, causing the WiFi to go down for about a minute. Can anyone think of any reason why this would happen?! Here is a 1-minute video showing what happens: https://youtu.be/vxmjun6NU-g

Topic

Re: reboot

In reply to WiFi access points reboot every day at the same time

If all 4 access points do the same, the POE switch is suspected. Go and sit next to it at 8:59 pm and see if it does something strange the next 2 minutes.

Also, does internet also go down on devices that are connected to that switch directly via an Ethernet cable? Or is it only WiFi that is down?
If you’re there at 8:57 PM you surely have time to connect your laptop to that switch and check.

It’s not the electric supply

In reply to Re: reboot

Another suggestion I tried was to run an electrical extension cord to the PoE switch, so that it was connected to a circuit in the house with no other equipment on it. This, unfortunately, had no effect — all the APs still performed reset at 9pm. It has to be something with the switch itself, right? I’ve asked the guy who set up the system to try a different switch…

Kicking around ideqas …

In reply to It’s not the electric supply

One would be to put that switch on a UPS for a test. Another would be to see if there is a way to measure the power on the Ethernet lines.

If it isn’t the power the question is if there is a configuration option on the switch – or even on all four of the APs.

With the stability issues of power in my neck of the woods I have built infrastructure with inverters and batteries that allow a practically foolproof 24×7 operation for long stretches of time – with a strange side effect: Every once in a while (usually between one and two weeks, round about) the devices act up in strange ways. A full power off and reboot usually helps. My suspicion: Many devices these days run a Java virtual machine. When Java programs run for a long time they may fragment their memory, which the JVM will eventually try to remedy by means of a “garbage collection.” While memory management is “in panic mode” a lot of the processing capacity of the device may not be available to regular functionality, resulting in “strange behavior.” A reboot at a convenient time about once a week may be a good plan to avoid this. Maybe your APs or the switch have such a facility built in. See if you can find anything about this in the documentation of the devices.

(I admit, this last one may be a long shot, but it has helped me with my satellite receivers …)

[Author]

Replies