Cause library
Every disconnect has a cause you can confirm with evidence. Each entry says how it presents on the floor, what to capture, the fix, and how to design it out.
Not sure where to start? Run the disconnect triage to rank likely causes from your symptoms.
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- Automatic channel and power changes during productionRadio resource management can change an access point's channel or power while production runs, and a channel change disconnects every client on that radio.
- Backhaul faults that look like wirelessWhen the wire, the switch, the power, or the mesh hop behind an access point fails, every client on it drops with good signal and clean air, so the fault looks like a wireless one.
- Band steering and load balancing on deterministic clientsSteering features delay, deny, or disconnect clients to spread load across bands and access points, and a control device that gets steered loses time its application never allowed for.
- Bluetooth and frequency-hopping radiosBluetooth scanners, headsets, and hopping crane remotes put short bursts all across the 2.4 GHz band, and the ones that do not adapt keep landing on your Wi-Fi channel.
- Bulk transfers competing with control trafficMap pushes, firmware updates, log uploads, and video hold the channel in long transmissions, and every one of them is airtime a control packet has to wait behind.
- Client driver and firmware defectsWhen drops follow one client model or firmware version across every access point, the fault usually sits in the client's radio driver or firmware, not in the network.
- Co-channel contentionAccess points that hear each other on the same channel split one channel's airtime between them, and wide channels make that more likely because there are fewer channels to go around.
- DFS radar eventsWhen an access point on a DFS channel detects radar, the rules force it off that channel and keep it off for a fixed non-occupancy period, and every client on that radio loses its connection.
- Electrical noise from drives and weldersDrives and welders are easy to blame for Wi-Fi drops, but most drive noise sits far below the Wi-Fi bands, so prove it with a spectrum capture and a timing match before you act on it.
- False DFS radar detectionsAn access point can mistake Wi-Fi bursts or other pulsed energy for radar, and the rules make it vacate the channel exactly as if the radar were real.
- Fast roaming mismatch between client and network802.11r, 802.11k, and 802.11v only help when both sides support them for the same key type and the same group of access points, and a mismatch quietly turns fast roams into slow ones or failed joins.
- Firmware upgrades and config pushes during productionAn access point that is upgrading cannot serve clients, and some configuration changes take radios down, so a push that lands during production drops everything it touches.
- Fleet density beyond channel capacityWi-Fi gives every client a chance at the channel, not a slot, so each robot you add stretches the worst-case wait for all of them until a message misses its timeout.
- Full 802.1X reauthentication on every roamWithout fast roaming, every handoff on an 802.1X network repeats the whole EAP exchange with the authentication server, and the client passes no data until it finishes.
- Key rotation and reauthentication timersGroup key rotation, session timeouts, and 802.1X reauthentication run on timers, and a client that handles them badly drops on a schedule even when it never moves.
- Layout changes since the surveyA site survey describes the plant on the day it was taken, so every new line, wall, rack, or machine since then is a change your coverage design never saw.
- Low data rates and management overheadEvery SSID announces itself at the slowest rate the network allows, so low basic rates and extra SSIDs take airtime from control traffic on every channel where they are heard.
- Microwave ovens and RF heatingMicrowave ovens and industrial microwave heaters radiate in the same 2.4 GHz band as your network, so the drops follow the lunch break or the heating cycle, not anything the network did.
- Missing or broken QoS markingWi-Fi can only favor control traffic it can recognize, and a marking that is never set, gets stripped, or maps to the wrong access category leaves your I/O queued with everything else.
- Moving metalCranes, forklifts, doors, and vehicles carry large metal surfaces through the RF path, so a link that measured fine can fade whenever one of them passes.
- Multipath in reflective spacesMetal racking, tanks, enclosures, and vehicles bounce the signal back on itself, so a client can show strong signal and still lose frames, because the copies cancel each other at the spot where its antenna sits.
- Neighboring networks and rogue access pointsAny network you do not control that shares or overlaps your channel spends airtime your control traffic needed, and you can only manage what you have detected.
- Off-channel scanning gapsA radio that leaves its channel to scan cannot carry traffic on it, so scanning by the client or by the access point opens short, repeating holes in the data stream.
- Personal hotspots and phonesPhones and LTE hotspots that people carry onto the floor put unmanaged access points and probe traffic on your channels, and in the United States you may not knock them off by radio.
- Ping-pong roaming between two access pointsA client that sits between two access points of similar signal can roam back and forth between them, and every roam it did not need is a gap your application has to absorb.
- Racking and inventory levelsYour coverage was measured at one inventory level, and every change in what fills the racks changes an RF path the survey no longer describes.
- Slow or distant authentication serverEvery 802.1X join waits on a series of round trips to the RADIUS server, so a slow, distant, or failing server stretches joins and full reauthentications by its round trip many times over.
- Sticky client holding a distant access pointThe client, not the network, decides when to roam, so a device can hold on to a fading access point until the link fails instead of moving to the closer one it already passed.
- Vehicle antenna shadowed by its own chassis or payloadAn antenna mounted low, or behind the vehicle's own body or load, loses line of sight to the access point in parts of the route, and the link fades even where a survey shows good coverage.
- Vehicle infotainment hotspotsEvery vehicle with wireless CarPlay or Android Auto carries its own 5 GHz access point, and when those radios are active near your floor they share your channels on terms you did not plan.
- Wireless cameras and sensor networksWi-Fi cameras stream continuously on whatever channel they join, and 2.4 GHz instrument networks transmit where Wi-Fi often cannot hear them, so both compete with your control traffic for the same channel.
No causes match these filters.