We are experiencing trouble with our NScan scanners during performances where they will lose connection with the server and then take about 30 seconds or more to restore the connection (often requiring a reboot). I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced the same trouble and found any resolutions? This seems to happen more frequently the larger the audience is and the faster that our volunteers try to scan the tickets. Our network security is already set at a low level. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Penny Tabor
IT Manager
Midland Center for the Arts
Midland, MI 48640
Hi Penny, I been having this issue for sometime ,end users complaining that the scanners were lossing conectivity not able to scan tickets, and of course once you go snd test the unit(s) every thing was properly working and nothing seems to be wrong.
I took the time and I went trougth the process of seeing what was happening while the tickets were been scan, the usher was surrunded by peoples at any given moment , making it dificult for the scanners to communicate with the WAP, because most of this unit work on a Line-of-sight, as soon as the usher got behind a wall or out of the WAP Line-of-sight, the scannning fail , so below are some of my solutions , hope it will help
a. definitely Peoples around the usher that is handeling theunit will affect the signals to properly arrive to the scanners, have them tell you if they actually loose connectivity by looking at the signal arrows on the top of the unit. <- -> , If they are I will sugest to add a 1watt power booster to your WAP to increase the signal strength (this solved my weak signal issue) any power higher than 1 watt require a FCC license. I also added aditional WAP with booster in the area where the scanning were done.
b. Also Check you API Server that is handling the NSCAN communication with tessitura, you may have a delay communication in here. If you have a proper working NSCAN netwrok communication you should be able to scan a ticket one a second +/- if you scan a ticket and you have a delay between scans , check for the network signal ,if the connectivity exist between the scanner and the WAP, the issue may reside between the API / tessitura server. Check you windows logs in the api server "%windir%\system32\logfiles\" in here you should be able to see the scanners communication with the API server. Make sure that the logs are enable on the IIS side.
c. I added 1 NIC card to the API server to process the communication between the Scanners and the API server and left the 2nd NIC for all other communications (for this you need to find out what is the IP address that your scanners are talking to the server)
d. check your DNS and WINS.. yes WINS, even if you are using server 2008 WINS is part of the network comunication between your Tess and API server.
e. check your time make sure that matches on all the servers , sometime your NPT syncronization is out of sync
f. based on the amount of WAP you have sending the same SSID , check the signal strength by the MAC address of the unit , not by the SSID , as some units will allways connect to the weakest link.
You can get a nice WIFI Analyser from farproc for your phone, it does provide all the info that you need to test your wireless network
regards Marco Franceschi