AP One Minis not associated with Balance 20

We have a situation we’ve not seen before. We attempted to make a change to the settings of the two AP One Minis managed by a B20. The APs are working fine. However the B20 no longer sees them.

When we first looked at the router this morning the AP page showed both to be on-line. However no information was seen on any of the AP | Controller Status pages. We reset one of the APs and that had no effect. We reset the B20 and that had no effect. We reloaded a good config from about a month ago and the APs still work but the B20 now shows zero of the the two APs on-line. And, as an example, the page AP | Controller Status | Wireless Client [sic] no clients are shown – although they are seen to be connected and passing data on Status | Client List.

The B20 is otherwise working fine but is scheduled for replacement/upgrade tomorrow (Sunday). So, there’s probably no time to enter a ticket and have a Peplink engineer respond. However, we’d appreciate any thoughts others may be able to offer as to what may have caused this [sorta scary] situation and how it may be resolved. Any thoughts? If possible, we’d like to work with this a bit before it’s replaced – for “next time.”

Rick I know you are experienced so this may be stating the obvious but sometimes…

On the B20 do you have AP > AP management turned on?
On the B20 do you have AP > Permitted AP = any ?

On the AP System > Controller Management checked on
On the AP System > Controller Type = AP Controller

On that last one, it should work fine on Auto but I’ve seen where the same device was configured on InControl someplace, and I could not control it on the Balance. It sounds to me like something other than your B20 is controlling those APs.

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Hello @Rick-DC,
@Don_Ferrario has already mentioned the points we’d cover, certainly check InControl2, we too have seen cases where the local router is clashing with InControl2 (most of the time we use InContorl2 for our clients, not the local balance router WAP manager).

Here is an easy way to check, put the serial numbers into a new InControl2 group and see if they are accepted, if not accepted then InControl2 will let you know they are already within the management platform (and if it is one of your organisations, were it is), if they are accepted or found, just delete them back out of InControl2 so your Balance router can have control.

Before you disconnect the Balance 20 or search through InControl2, grab the diagnostic logs and some screenshots (dashboard, status page, etc) from the Balance 20 & also the WAPs, there is no harm in grabbing those and sending them over in a support ticket to Peplink to investigate later.

Happy to Help,
Marcus :slight_smile:

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All good thoughts Don. TU. The subject B20 has been operating with these two APs quite well for over a year. Very stable. Not controlled via In-Control. All settings correct as you suggest and unchanged.

Last evening our tech told me he asked the owners if there were any unusual events and they told him the power failed. Our best guess is that the B20 crashed and did not recover.

This is a strange one!

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Hi Marcus. Thanks for your thoughts – as always. This B20 is not controlled via InControl. Our first thought was that it appeared that the locus of control of the APs was elsewhere but I think that’s rather impossible. In actuality, it seems that they just went “out to lunch.”

Good idea grabbing the diags and screen shots. It will be too late for the folks @ Peplink to take a look as our window for replacing the B20 opens in a couple of hours. But maybe someone there would like to do a “post mortum.”

One more interesting finding: On the AP’s client list page, no clients are shown. When one goes to the B20’s Status | Client List page all clients are there, including those using wi-fi, but all are shown as being connected via Ethernet, which is not correct.

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@Rick-DC, I would suggest to submit a support ticket for us to take a deeper look at the 3 devices.

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@WeiMing: We opened ticket # 787559 yesterday. And, subsequently, we received an e-mail from @Oh_Yaw_Theng. I spoke with our client late yesterday afternoon was given an OK to postpone the planned router upgrade. We agreed this is too serious to ignore and fix with an equipment change/upgrade. They join us in wanting to understand what happened. (It’s good to have understanding clients. :nerd_face:)

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Here’s an update for those who are paying attention to this issue: I received a message this morning from the Peplink support team indicating that the matter had been referred to the engineering team. A bug in the code was identified and will be included in the next FW release. In the interim, one of the engineers fixed the problem in the B20 manually.

Ya gotta ask: With what other product line can one get support like Peplink offers? :nerd_face: It’s great to know we’re not “alone” out there.

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