Loosing a port in heavy snow

[cwachs]

I have a WS-6-MINI on the roof of a home. It is powering a Cambium ePMP Force 180 as the inbound link (backhaul) and a Cambium ePMP 1000 AP as the outbound.

On two different occasions during a fairly heavy snow storm, I am loosing connectivity between the Force 180 and the switch. The watchdog on the switch senses the loss and re-boots the Force 180 which brings it back up for about 15 minutes and then the cycle repeats.

Only does this during snow storms. When the switch and AP appear down, I can still access the Force 180. The Force 180 says it has a 1000BT connection to the Netonix but I am not able to ping any further than the Force 180. The Netonix will report about 450 errors on the Ethernet port for the Force 180 each time it needs to reboot.

The Netonix is running 1.4.6.

As soon as the snow stops and I can safely get on the roof, I am going to replace both the Force 180 radio and the Netonix. I don't know which one is the issue. It is rock solid when it is not snowing heavily so this is what makes me concerned. The Netonix is enclosed in the plastic switch enclosure Netonix sells. Rain has no ill effect, just heavy snow.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[sirhc]

Try disabling Flow Control.

I am guessing you will see a high number of Tx Pause Frames on the backhaul port and a lot of Rx Pause Frames on the AP port.

The Snow is causing the AP to have more wireless retries which fills up the switch buffers and forces the switch to send Pause Frames out the port of your backhaul basically packet locking the switch.

OR YOU DO HAVE A BAD RADIO????

The radio could be cold temp failing.

[mike99]

Snow cause more ESD problem if you have a bad ground.

[cwachs]

I thought about the flow control in the last snow storm and turned it off back then on both radios. That did not seem to help it this time.

Your ESD response does make some sense. We are grounded up there to a large ground wire put in by the solar installers. That ground wire is also grounding the panels. Might that be causing issues in the snow... Once some of the snow melts off and I can get up there, I'll look into that. I am probably going to replace the BH radio and the switch since I am up there and don't want to go back up but I'll pay close attention to the ground.

[sirhc]

I thought about the flow control in the last snow storm and turned it off back then on both radios. That did not seem to help it this time.

Your ESD response does make some sense. We are grounded up there to a large ground wire put in by the solar installers. That ground wire is also grounding the panels. Might that be causing issues in the snow... Once some of the snow melts off and I can get up there, I'll look into that. I am probably going to replace the BH radio and the switch since I am up there and don't want to go back up but I'll pay close attention to the ground.

The important thing is that the ground up on the roof is bonded to the electrical service ground.


Here are some good posts on grounding:
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=1816
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=188
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=1429
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1786&start=30#p13447
https://community.ubnt.com/t5/airFiber/ ... rue#M31070

[lligetfa]

We are grounded up there to a large ground wire put in by the solar installers...

I would call out that ground as suspect. Maybe when the solar panels are snow covered there is an increase in noise on the ground.

[cwachs]

While I'm seeing some logic, would a bad ground or ESD cause the switch to stop talking to a single radio until that radio was rebooted? Once it looses comms with that radio, it will not regain communication until the radio is rebooted - then it comes back instantly.

I would guess that ESD would come and go without needing to reboot the radio? Or does this get chalked up as weirdness that happens with grounding issues?

[sirhc]

Personally I "think" this is a bad radio.

I would start there.