Trouble Firmware WMS5316

Also wating for an update :)

Bump for update. We are a reseller and I am about deploy our first WMS5316 with 3 WAPs now WNDAP350.

I have a WMS5316 with 5 x WNAP320... This controller is terrible. Does not find access points, was rebooting all the time, managed to get 3 access points found, but the other 2... no hope. Autodiscover page blanks out in firefox and ie. Controller firmware is at 2.1.2, and AP's at 2.1.1... Where can I get this 2.1.4?

Cheers!

Hey all,
So after way too many hours of troubleshooting, we got our WMS5316 and 6 WNDAP350 WAPs configured and working on firmware v2.1.2.

I created a Word doc for our internal use, but here is what I found that works:

This document covers setting up a Netgear WMS5316 WiFi controller and a Netgear WNDAP350 WAP on firmware version 2.1.2 (both controller and WAP have the same firmware version number). The setup is very specific and will not work otherwise, so these instructions will need to be followed exactly.
1. Prepare the WMS5316
a. Download the firmware v2.1.2 from Netgear’s site
http://support.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/19382/~/wms5316-firmware-version-2.1.2
b. Change your IP to be something on the 192.168.0.X subnet (other than 192.168.0.250 or 192.168.201.237)
c. Here are the defaults:
i. IP: 192.168.0.250
ii. Username: admin
iii. Password: password
d. Upgrade the firmware (“Maintenance” tab -> “Upgrade” subtab)
e. Factory Reset the WMS5316 by pressing the button on the back of the unit for several seconds. Resetting the device through the web interface will not do the trick.
f. Do the base config (change the IP address, password, VLANs, SSIDs on the controller as you see fit). I would use an internal NTP server as some of the default gateway settings on the WAPs can cause issues.
i. See additional info at the bottom of the document.
2. Prepare the WNDAP350 (Only setup one WAP at a time)
a. Download the firmware v2.1.2 from Netgear’s site
http://support.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/19747/~/wndap350-firmware-version-2.1.2
b. Change your IP to be something on the 192.168.0.X subnet (other than 192.168.0.250 or 192.168.201.237)
c. Here are the defaults:
i. IP: 192.168.0.237
ii. Username: admin
iii. Password: password
d. Upgrade the firmware (“Maintenance” tab -> “Upgrade” subtab)
e. Factory Reset the WMS5316 by pressing the button on the back of the unit for several seconds. Resetting the device through the web interface will not do the trick.
f. Do nothing else with the WNDAP350. Do not change the IP, do not change the password, do not change the device VLAN, do nothing.
g. Make sure that the WAP is on the same physical/virtual network (VLAN) as the controller. The subnets may not match between the controller and WAP, but that is what we need. The simplest way to achieve this is to just plug the WAP into the controller port.
3. Join the WNDAP350 to the WMS5316
a. Log onto the web interface of the WMS5316. On the “Configuration” tab -> “Access Point Discovery” subtab, click the “Search” button.
b. You should now see the WAP. It should show as a WNDAP350, an IP of 192.168.0.237, and a place to put a new IP address in. Check the box beside the WAP and enter the new IP address for it.
c. Click “Add” and after about a minute or two, it should show in the “Configuration” tab -> “Access Point Groups” subtab.
d. You can now edit the WAP, buy making sure that the WAP is selected and clicking the “Edit” button.
i. Name
ii. Password
iii. Group
iv. Default Gateway (Leave this blank)
v. Untagged VLAN (if needed)
vi. Management VLAN (if needed)
e. The WAP may disconnect for a few seconds, but it will reconnect. The changes that were made here, will apply to the WAP itself, including password.
f. If you have additional WAPs to setup, then go back to step 2 and complete this document before adding a 3rd, 4th, etc. You must only do one WAP at a time.

Additional Info:
• I had better luck using only the “Basic” group on the controller than using “Advanced” groups
• Sometimes the one of the SSIDs that you can configure on the controller doesn’t propagate to the WAPs, so you may need to log onto each WAP and manually configure this SSID.
• Turn off “WMM Powersave” in the QoS settings. This can cause disconnections of devices and perceived slowness.
• I left the “Load Balancing” feature off as it seemed to cause issues with disconnects. This may have only affected older firmwares through.
• Once all of the WAPs are setup, I would recommend running the “Channel Allocation” to autodetect the best channels for the WAPs to be on. I had to run it twice to get the best config.
• Firmware v2.0.9 on the WNDAP350 had issues where the MAC address would randomly change between the Ethernet MAC address and the 2.4Ghz MAC address as well as cause tons of disconnects and lag and does not allow Apple (Mac) devices to connect with stability (so I've heard).
• Firmware v2.0.3 on the WMS5316 makes you type the first 6 hexadecimal characters of the MAC address (OUI) in the controller before it detects the WAPs.



I hope this helps!

After testing a couple of scenarios the combination of FW 2.0.3 on the WMS5316 and FW 2.1.2 on the WNDAP350´s is working semi stable.

WMS with FW 2.0.3 enables you to add the OIDs for the AP´s and the 2.1.2 seems to be the most stable FW for the APs.

FW 2.1.2 on the WMS is not working for me because it lacks support for the WAP302 which is already in use on the customers network AND I´m not able to discover the WNSAP350´s once i´ve upgraded.
(neither automatically nor per IP and regardless if preconfigured or after a hard reset)

Also from time to time the AP´s are loosing sync because of an authentication failture and only resync after a reboot of the WMS.

BTW: In my opinion it´s a disappointing behaviour to drop support for some devices without any words on the product page and without giving any reason.

I can´t recommend it for productive use. Maybe the next FW Version 2.1.4, which possibly is available after poking somone of Netgears support guys, will fix a few things. In the meanwhile I´ll do some extended testing on reliability and throughput.

Same issue for me.. :-(
I got 2 WNDAP350 and 1 WNDAP360, but non of them is discovered by the wms5316.
It seems that a lot of costomers has this problem, but why is Netgear not replying here at the Netgear official forum.
If there is no workaround or any way to fix this, then just inform costomers how far they are in the progress of fixing this.
Information to costomers is the keyword, else the costomer lose there trust to this vendor.

Just got a WMS5316 + 2x WNDAP350.
You cna welcome me to the "cant find the AP's" club.

I have 3 WMS5316's are 3 different school systems I work with. All of them have been a huge pain to deal with. One of the districts we put in some 350's and they are complete garbage. After spending 2 months working with Netgear and getting nowhere, we just ate the cost and bought wg103's. Netgear wouldn't let us return them or even exchange them for the cheaper 103 units (past warranty when we realized they weren't going to work). The 103's suffer from far less problems than the 350's, but they have issues as well. All 3 districts that use 103's have the same issue: I have the controllers running on different firmware versions and I still see the same problems... the AP's randomly get reset to factory defaults. No pattern here, just random.. some go months, some go days... talk about a PITA. I play with options until I can't see straight, nothing makes any difference.

From my dealings with the WMS5316 in multiple environments, I can honestly say this whole setup is a big piece of crap.....

Anybody using 103's and having this issue???

I configured it as ComResource did. But now I cannot find any method to change subnet of WMS and APs from 192.168.0 to 192.168.20. After changing APs IP manually or through WMS interface WMS cannot see them. I think it should be discovered once again. How can one do it?

Can it be just a IE / Firefox problem? I had the same problems as in this thread with an WMS5316 and an WNDAP350. No discovery and so on. I tried Chrome and it worked out of the box as described. Could it be that simple?