How are you determining that 2.4 isn't being broadcast?
Do you have band steering enabled? That can "hide" 2.4, in a manner of speaking.
https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Radio_Settings/Band_Steering_Overview
You are correct, that when you choose to manually/statically configure the AP (any model) to OFF, it does not actually turn it 'off' power wise.
It is still 'on', however it will not broadcast any of your SSID's, which at the end of the day is what you want.
What it will do however, is still keep broadcasting its MESHING frames..
Pretty sure the MESHING is at max power and 1 Mbps, the way Cisco RRM frames are as well, so even if you set the 2.4GHz power to 1 dBm, those MESHING frames will still send at max power + lowest data rate.
This is why you can still 'see it' from another AP. I would REALLY love for it to actually turn all the way off though. Really sucks that it doesn't.
The only way to turn off the MESHING (which should be the only traffic coming from it), is to have support give you access to enable/disable MESHING under the General settings for each Network.
However, I can tell you first hand that 26.X train has a very specific and particular bug with MESHING (in the release notes as known issue), so if you disable it, your access points will start rebooting randomly.
If your running 26.X code I would not do it, as I know first hand it is going to cause issues with stability.
25.13 should be fine (as far as I know)
What I will tell you is that with the 2.4GHZ radio 'OFF' and MESHING set to Disabled, the AP will still show the 2.4GHz radio power at whatever value it is going to randomly choose. So you'll just have to ignore that, and know that there isn't anything emitting from it.
@pgrovesnz wrote:
@NolanHerring wrote:
Sounds good
What I will tell you is that with the 2.4GHZ radio 'OFF' and MESHING set to Disabled, the AP will still show the 2.4GHz radio power at whatever value it is going to randomly choose. So you'll just have to ignore that, and know that there isn't anything emitting from it.If it does behave like that that is terrible behavior when tuning a network at a stadium environment.
We have 11 MR53E access points with narrow patch antennas. For the 2.4GHz to work better and avoid multiple APs on the same channel we want to completely disable the 2.4 on some APs (6 of them). The rest of the APs have the power level dropped to below 8.
Having any AP at full power will cause issues on the other APs using the same channel.
The only solution at the moment is to set the AP power on the APs to low and hopefully cause any other issues.
Wait, hold on a minute I think there is some confusion here.
You are correct you will want to disable some, but it is going to be truly impossible to eliminate any CCI/CCC on 2.4GHz. If your still using that band, it will be better to have 'some contention and full coverage', vs 'no contention and poor coverage'.
Your concerned that when you set them to OFF, that the power output value changes on the dashboard from lets say you had 8dBm, to 23dBm. That happens when I turn it to OFF. You can safely ignore this.
They are indeed 'OFF' in the sense that they will not be broadcasting any wireless from your configured SSIDs. So you would be much better off turning those 6 that you want to disable into the OFF mode versus low power. Low power means that they will indeed still be on and broadcasting and you don't want that if your trying to tune things.
Set them to OFF, they won't send any more traffic, and ignore that silly default dBm value you see on the dashboard.
MESHING is going to be there if you set to OFF or low power. It will be there at max power and lowest data rate no matter what setting you use. Just like Cisco's RRM, this can't be edited. The only way to stop that is to disable meshing all together.
So your best solution is to use 25.13, disable meshing, and turn off those 6 access point 2.4GHz radios, and you'll be golden as far as trying to accomplish what you are trying to do. Insert any vendor and you'll end up in the same end state. Meraki just takes a little more tweaking to maneuver into that position (calling support etc.).
I have turned off the 2.4 GHz on a MR53 using RF profile where only 5 GHz band is allowed.
When I look at RF spectrum from neighboring AP's I can still see the MAC address of the disabled AP broadcasting quite strong but at 802.11g mode on channel 1 but at a high data rate (I don't trust that output because it sees 802.11ac on channel 1???)
So I started a packet capture on the neighboring AP and found it that it still sends some LLC frames once every 30 seconds.
@GIdenJoe Is that with MESHING enabled or disabled? Probably meshing is what your still seeing being sent as it will keep sending those frames to ensure the AP can still work in repeater mode.
@pgrovesnz wrote:
Since the wireless is being set up for a high density deployment we still want 2.4GHz available on some access points so this isn't an option.
@pgrovesnz wrote:
I can monitor it from the adjacent access points
That is fine. If your SSID is set for dual-band, it will still function on the access points that you leave 2.4GHz enabled. The ones that you have set the 2.4GHz radio to OFF, simply will not broadcast the SSID on the 2.4GHz radio, even if it is set for dual-band.
You can monitor it from adjacent access points because MESHING is what is being used for that. It is not broadcasting your SSID on the 2.4GHz radio.
