MR42 - 802.11 disassociation - unknown reason

AaronJames
Here to help

MR42 - 802.11 disassociation - unknown reason

Hello,

 

I'm looking after a couple of MR42's in a network that are connected to the POE ports on an MX65 appliance.

 

We were having a few client wifi dropouts, so I changed each AP to have separate SSID assigned to them, instead of applying the SSID's to all AP. I figured the users were probably roaming to the closest AP and disconnecting/reconnecting at random times depending upon signal strength. I also got the users to forget the other SSID and only have the one SSID saved. Am also getting them to update their device OS and wifi drivers and check their power/sleep settings.

 

SSID's are set to use WPA2 with Pre-shared key (PSK), NAT mode: Use Meraki DHCP, no vlan tagging or filtering and Dual band operation with Band Steering is set and wifi channel is set to auto.

 

There are typically between 3-10x clients connecting to the AP's.

Clients typically connect between 27-52db. All clients appear to be connecting via 5Ghz.

Clients are a combination of Windows10, macOS, iPhone and Android.

 

I'm noticing some clients are still getting disconnected randomly and noticed sometimes we get this error in the logs: 802.11 disassociation - unknown reason. Which doesn't give much info.

 

Does anyone have any recommended further troubleshooting steps or wifi configuration change recommendations that might help alleviate the dropouts or improve roaming between AP (if that is still the issue)?

 

Kind regards

Aaron

2 REPLIES 2
NolanHerring
Kind of a big deal

Few things

 

1 - Do not make a unique SSID for each AP, that is going in the wrong direction 100% and does not allow roaming to work at all.

2 - Do not use NAT mode, this does not allow for proper roaming, you need to use bridge-mode and choose a specific VLAN for the single SSID

 

Clients will roam because the clients decide they want to, and using PSK it should be fast enough nobody will ever notice. NAT mode is desinged for single-AP coffee shop setups, each time you move from one AP to the other, you break all TCP sessions, so anything like wifi-calling etc., will hard drop each time.

 

Also I would make the SSID 5GHz only, and have another SSID that is 2.4GHz (support can enable the option for you to toggle 2.4 only mode if you ask them).  This will ensure that dual-band isn't giving clients any grief. Also turn off load-balancing setting. 

 

Make sure your TX power levels are not all over the place. I would recommend changing the minimum data rate to 6Mbps as well for management frames since you only have a few AP's, making it higher won't make any difference and might hurt clients that are flaky.

 

You will see client disconnects often, its normal. They go to sleep, or simple turn off, roam, go out of range etc. 


Channel width I would personally take a look at. Check the spectrum.  Is there a ton of other networks? If so, you might want to look at only using 40MHz or 20MHz.  80MHz is rare to get away with in business environments.

 

For the windows machines, make sure their drivers are updated for the wireless card (assuming Intel). 90% of the time its a driver issue. Android and Apple not much you can do about, they are usually rock solid anyhow.

Nolan Herring | nolanwifi.com
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Hey NolanHerring,

 

Many thanks for your detailed reply. That all makes sense, I'll go through list and implement your recommendations. 🙂

If I have any issues I'll post back.

 

Kind regards

Aaron

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