# Cascades of Tucson — UniFi Full Audit (2026-06-16)

Generated by the `unifi-wifi` skill (read-only). Fleet: **77 U7-Pro APs, 12 switches, ~587 clients**,
no UniFi gateway (pfSense firewall). All collectors ran clean.

## Issues — prioritized

| # | Sev | Issue | Detail / fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | **HIGH** | 2.4 GHz saturation (the "bad for some users") | 75 radios at auto/full power, ch6/1/11 at 16k–33k neighbor BSSIDs; 123 clients on 2.4 at ~10% retry. Fix: power-down 65 radios to Low, then disable 9 redundant (plan below). |
| 2 | **HIGH** | ~25 switch ports linked at 100 M but gig-capable | FastEthernet/cabling-or-NIC issue capping those APs/devices at 100 Mbps (1st/2nd/3rd-floor switches). Physical: re-terminate/replace cable or check NIC. |
| 3 | **MED** | 6 GHz essentially unused — **1 client** of 587 | 75 6E radios live, nearly empty. Enable band-steering (`bandsteer`/`bands`) to offload 5 GHz onto the clean band. |
| 4 | **MED** | 5 GHz on 80 MHz (76/77) + 55 on DFS | 80 MHz kills spatial reuse in density → 40 MHz. DFS empirically low-risk here (0 radar events) but move to non-DFS for resilience (near Davis-Monthan). |
| 5 | **MED** | 6 APs with 2.4 min-RSSI OFF; 4 APs off the 1/6/11 plan | min-RSSI OFF: 615, 608, 505, 517, 622, salon. Off-plan (auto): 128, 108, 108U7-Pro, salon. |
| 6 | **LOW** | 3 offline switches + 2 disconnected APs + 1 firmware update | Offline: Switch 2nd Floor #2, Switch 4th Floor #2, USW Pro Max 16. APs: 108 ×2 (cable run pending, known). 1 device upgradable. |
| 7 | **LOW** | p38 (1st Floor USW) 4.0% tx-drop rate | Correlates with the underspeed/heavy-traffic ports; investigate after #2. |

## WiFi detail
- **2.4 GHz:** 77 radios, all 20 MHz (good); power auto×75 (want Low); channels 1:20 / 6:28 / 11:25 / auto:4.
  min-RSSI OFF on 6. Neighbor density: ch6 33,376 · ch1 19,355 · ch11 16,598 BSSIDs. Live retry avg **10.2%**.
- **5 GHz:** 77 radios, 80 MHz ×76 / 40 MHz ×1; rogue density biased to ch149/157 (busy upper). 463 clients. retry avg **8.0%**.
- **6 GHz:** 75 radios active, **1 client**. Wide open.
- **AP satisfaction (live):** min 90 / median 98 / max 100 → healthy in aggregate; the pain is the 2.4 GHz client tail.

## Data-backed radio plan (optimize-radios + /proc/ui_neighbor SNR matrix)
- **Phase A — power-down 65** 2.4 radios to Low (smaller cells cut mutual interference; coverage-safe).
- **Phase C — disable 9** redundant 2.4 radios after re-measure (each heard by ≥2 strong neighbors):
  127→128, 229→128, 248→348, 330→128, 445→347/348/247, 428→128, 622→505/615/608, Kitchen→Memcare TV room,
  Dining Room→memcare piano. Est. interference-airtime removed: ~619.
- **Channel plan available:** 2.4 GHz 1/6/11 graph-color (co-channel pairs **92→35**); 5 GHz non-DFS
  (**20→0** and all off DFS).

## Switch / PoE (12 switches, 29 flags)
- ~25 ports at 100 M but gig-capable (see #2). PoE budgets healthy (e.g. 1st-floor 160/600 W).
- 3 offline switches (above).

## Gateway / WAN
- No UniFi gateway (pfSense) → WAN/internet not measurable via UniFi. Adoption: APs 77 (2 disc), switches
  12 (3 disc), 587 clients.

## Recommended sequence
1. Physical: fix the ~25 underspeed ports (#2) + chase the 3 offline switches / AP 108 cable.
2. WiFi Phase A: power-down 2.4 to Low per zone, validate with watch-ap (live before/after).
3. Enable 6 GHz band-steering + 5 GHz 80→40 MHz non-DFS channel plan.
4. Set 2.4 min-RSSI on the 6 OFF APs; pin the 4 off-plan APs to 1/6/11.
5. Phase C: disable the 9 redundant 2.4 radios after re-measure.

(All changes via the gated `apply-radio`/`apply-wlan`/`channel-plan` scripts — per zone, with rollback +
live validation. Nothing applied in this audit.)

---

## pfSense health check (2026-06-16) — ruling out the gateway as a WiFi factor

Investigated the Cascades pfSense (`192.168.0.1`, **pfSense Plus 25.07-RELEASE**, Netgate) over the site
VPN via SSH, to confirm whether any gateway-side issue contributes to the "WiFi bad for some users"
symptom. **Verdict: pfSense is healthy and is NOT a contributor — the problem is RF-side (2.4 GHz).**

| Area | Finding | WiFi impact |
|---|---|---|
| **DHCP exhaustion** | **0** "no free leases" events in dhcpd.log. WiFi/AP pool `192.168.0.0/22` (range 192.168.2.2–3.254, cap ~507) only **270 active (~53%)**; per-unit /28s + `10.0.20/.50` all have headroom | **Ruled out** (was the top suspect) |
| **DNS** | unbound resolver running | Fine |
| **WAN** | Dual Cox — WAN1 `184.191.143.62/30`, WAN2 `72.211.21.217/27`, both active **full-duplex**, `WAN_Group` gateway group, **no loss/down events** logged | Fine |
| **Firewall states** | 28,368 / 790,000 limit | Fine |
| **CPU / mbuf / uptime** | load 0.6, mbufs nominal, 10-day uptime | Healthy |

**Architecture:** per-unit design — **199 DHCP subnets**, mostly `10.x.y.0/28` per apartment (assisted-
living L2 isolation) + the `192.168.0.0/22` staff/AP network (APs + most WiFi clients). Active DHCP
backend is **ISC** (Kea config present but dormant).

**Minor (not WiFi-related):** `igc3`/WAN2 logged 1707 input-errors + 1707 "collisions", but the link is
2.5GbE full-duplex/active with zero gateway loss — consistent with the known Intel I225/I226 2.5G counter
quirk, not a real fault. No action needed unless WAN2 misbehaves.

**Conclusion:** gateway/DHCP/DNS/WAN are not bottlenecking the wireless. The 2.4 GHz remediation
(power-down + coverage-redundancy disables) remains the correct and sole fix for the client-experience tail.

## Daytime re-check (2026-06-17, ~09:33, loaded network)

Post-remediation loaded-network measurement (overnight 6/17: 24 of 76 2.4 radios disabled, 42 set to Low
~6 dBm; Floors 5/6 + mesh untouched). Fleet healthy: 77 adopted / 2 disconnected (same known 108 + 1) --
**no AP went offline.**

**Active-radio-only snapshot (09:33, excludes the 24 disabled):** cu_total 67%, cu_interf 48%, clients 105
(vs pre-change active cu_total 77% / cu_interf 64%).

**Time-of-day-controlled hourly (this AM vs same hours yesterday @ full power):**
| 2.4 site-wide AM | Yesterday (full) | Today (post) |
|---|---|---|
| cu_total | 79% | 44% |
| cu_interf | 66% | 32% |
| retry% | 17.0% | 23.4% |
| satisfaction | 39 | 30 |
| sta/radio | 2.32 | 2.21 |

**Mixed result -- read honestly:**
- WIN: 2.4 interference/airtime is clearly down (fewer contending transmitters + smaller cells). On the
  active radios, cu_interf ~64% -> ~48% (snapshot) / 66% -> 32% (morning hourly avg, fewer radios).
- CONCERN: **retry rose (17.0 -> 23.4%) and satisfaction fell (39 -> 30)** time-of-day-controlled. Likely
  OVER-THINNING: Low = ~6 dBm is a 17 dB cut from auto (~23), and with 24 radios also disabled some edge
  2.4 clients now reach a farther/weaker AP -> more retransmits, lower satisfaction. (Partly composition:
  fewer 2.4 clients today, so the remaining tail may be the stubborn legacy/far devices.)

**RECOMMENDATION (needs Howard's go -- this re-check is read-only):**
1. Bump the KEPT 2.4 radios from Low -> **Medium** (~12-15 dBm): restores client signal while keeping cells
   smaller than full power. `apply-radio cascades ng power medium --zone ...` per floor, then re-measure.
2. Do NOT expand disables further; consider re-enabling a specific radio if a dead zone/complaint appears.
3. Re-measure retry/satisfaction after the Low->Medium bump (same time-of-day) to confirm recovery.
The interference goal is met; the lever now is finding the power floor that keeps cells tight WITHOUT
starving edge clients. Medium is the likely sweet spot vs the aggressive Low.
