Users reporting "No Internet" on certain subents.

[Ytrakas5]

Hello community 👋🏼

I volunteer at a Catholic school with ~1,000 users, helping to manage IT. We've been receiving complaints that some devices lose internet access.

Network Setup:

• Firewall: MX450

• Switches: MS355

• APs: MR56

• Infrastructure: Full fiber across 5 buildings

• ISP: 2 Gbps fiber (Cox)

• DHCP: Windows Server

• Authentication: RADIUS

• DNS: Cloudflare for student VLAN, local for primary VLAN

Issue Details:

Devices auth successfully and lose Internet on VLANs other than VLAN 1.

After ~5 minutes of idle time, the device loses internet access and cannot reconnect.

This does not affect VLAN 1 (primary); devices on VLAN 1 remain stable.

The only fix I’ve found is refreshing the connection using Ubiquiti’s WiFiMan app.

Troubleshooting So Far:

Tried switching student VLAN to local DNS → No improvement.

RADIUS authentication works fine, so it doesn’t seem like an authentication issue.

Any thoughts on what might be causing this?

Thanks in advance!

[DarrenOC]

Is the issue site wide or are you able to isolate to a building and switch stack?

On your MX - do you have firewall rules in place here that restrict port 8080 and 443?

Is this affecting both wired and wireless users?

[Mloraditch]

Can you ping the gateway? Do the devices show authorized in the Meraki client info? Do the ports show any errors? If you disable the access policy on the port do the devices work?

[DarrenOC]

Throughout all this I assume your network devices have remained stable and haven’t lost registration to the Meraki dashboard?  These devices are on VLAN 1 or another Management VLAN?

[DarrenOC]

Assume this is a long standing network and the issues have just started happening?

Dont rush into making lots of sporadic changes in the hope of resolving the issue.