Question

Difficulty: Very hardWired and Wireless Network Issues

A network technician is diagnosing connectivity issues in a manufacturing facility. Mobile Wi-Fi terminals roaming across 2.4 GHz access points experience frequent packet loss and drops, with an audit showing access points currently configured to channels 1, 3, and 6. Meanwhile, a newly installed wired desktop receives an APIPA address of 169.254.14.22 and cannot reach local server resources. Which TWO of the following actions should the technician take to resolve these issues?

  1. Reconfigure the 2.4 GHz wireless access points to use non-overlapping channels (1, 6, and 11).Answer
  2. Verify physical Ethernet link lights on the desktop network card and troubleshoot DHCP server reachability.Answer
  3. C
    Set adjacent wireless access points to channels 2, 3, and 4 to maximize available frequency bandwidth.
  4. D
    Reconfigure network firewall rules to swap HTTP port 80 with HTTPS port 443 to restore DHCP address leasing.
  5. E
    Replace the local subnet gateway router with an unmanaged Layer 2 switch to enable local IP address assignment.

Answer

The technician should reconfigure the 2.4 GHz wireless access points to use non-overlapping channels (1, 6, and 11) to resolve signal interference, and check physical link lights and DHCP server reachability to resolve the APIPA address assignment on the wired desktop.
Reconfiguring 2.4 GHz access points to non-overlapping channels (1, 6, and 11) eliminates channel interference causing Wi-Fi packet drops. Checking physical link lights and DHCP reachability addresses the root cause of the workstation receiving an APIPA address (169.254.x.x) due to unacknowledged DHCP discovery.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Resolve 2.4 GHz wireless channel interference
Reconfiguring access points to use channels 1, 6, and 11 removes adjacent-channel interference and prevents packet loss during roaming.
Channels 1, 3, and 6 overlap in the 2.4 GHz spectrum, causing co-channel interference.
2
Diagnose wired network APIPA assignment
Verifying physical link indicators and inspecting DHCP server/relay configuration identifies why the client cannot acquire a valid dynamic IP address.
An address in the 169.254.0.0/16 range signifies that the operating system self-assigned an APIPA address because no DHCP server responded.

Key Concept

Resolving 2.4 GHz wireless channel overlap interference and wired client APIPA reachability failures.
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