Alcatel 8118 MIPT loses connection

[Yerb]

Hi everyone!

We have 100 Alcatel 8118 IPTouch Mobile phones and Hewlett-Packard Wi-Fi solution (Wi-Fi controller+Wi-Fi access points). When we are trying to connect MIPT phone to the Wi-Fi, we are opening Admin menu pressing 40022. After we configuring static IP address and IF WE ARE NOT CLOSING Admin menu, phone is connecting to Wi-Fi network, but after closing Admin menu, phone is rebooting automatically and after can not to connect back to the W-Fi network. And if we will open Admin menu again and will change ONLY TFTP 1 IP address to any IP, phone will connect to the network again, but after reboot the phone will lost connection again. We tried to choose Favour Aclatel DHCP, Only use Alcatel DHCP and Use any DHCP options, but the phone gets new IP address using DHCP only if before we configured static IP address. We tried many times to connect the phone to the network, but everytime we got same problem.

What is the problem, how do you think?

[silvio]

You have 100 phones and can't use it??? Did you have the usb-config-adapter with winpdm. In your case you should use this one instead of config via menu. With winpdm-software there are more possibilities to find a good config for your environment.

F.e. without the usb your wlan solution has to push the correct countryversion (802.11h if I remember correctly) to the phone, phone needs actual release to support this.

regards
Silvio

[Yerb]

Hi, Silvio!

Thanks for your reply! Could you please show where can I find release for the phones? I searched on Alcatel-Lucent site but didn't find it .

[silvio]

You need access to the businesspartnerportal from Alu (this is for partners only). In the software area - phones you will find it. If you are not a businesspartner than ask the company where you have bought the phones.
regards
Silvio

[stianj]

Hi Yerb!

Did you solve this? What version are you running on your HP MSM? (I expect it is MSM). I've had nothing but trouble after we upgraded to v6.x on our controllers. v5.7.4 worked ok. I might have found a solution, but I'm not too happy about it. Would be very interesting if we could share our experiences using Alcatel-Lucent 8118 and HP MSM...

Regards,
Stian

[tot3nkopf]

Hi Yerb!

Did you solve this? What version are you running on your HP MSM? (I expect it is MSM). I've had nothing but trouble after we upgraded to v6.x on our controllers. v5.7.4 worked ok. I might have found a solution, but I'm not too happy about it. Would be very interesting if we could share our experiences using Alcatel-Lucent 8118 and HP MSM...

Regards,
Stian

I think you need to follow PCS processes when using ALU VoWlan solution with 3rd party wifi controllers. Did you follow such process? (In the past Spectralink boxes were used in such cases, now they are discontinued...I am not sure which is the way to go in this case now...)

[stianj]

I did not follow such process (What is PCS..?)

When we first investigated deploying Alcatel 8118 our Wifi-controllers were running older firmware, and it worked ok. We then took the decision to deploy Alcatel 8118, despite it not being supported by neither Alcatel nor HP.

Later, HP released much better firmware for their controllers, which have a lot of useful features. RRM is one of them, which have improved our WLAN experience a lot (we have about 70 sites and in total 300 APs). But we have had big problems with the handsets after we got this newer version. After a lot of experimenting it seems I have fixed it - but it involves disabling many very useful features, thus degrading the general WLAN experience for other users.

I see our handsets have version 2.6.6. Is there any newer? When I read the Cisco Configuration Guide for Alctale handsets, all kinds of auto channel or auto power should be disabled. This guide is from 2011, and maybe it was ok then, but today most infrastructure supports 802.11k and it really makes a difference. But not if using Alcatel handsets...

[tot3nkopf]

ALU PCS --> ALU Premium Customer Support
There are features that are supported officially only under PCS.

[stianj]

Ahh, I see. We probably should have, but since we got it working ok out of the box initially, we didn't think much further. Our supplier should take this case further. Thanks for your advice

(Altough it would still be interesting to hear how it's going with Yerb...)

Do you know what's the latest software for the 8118?

[stianj]

My supplier just sent me version 5.1.30, which in the release notes says: "Version 5.1.30 supports the 802.11k radio resources management."

I expect this to solve all my worries as soon as I get it implemented