MR84 - Using Mixed Antenna types against Meraki Spec 🏴‍☠️

RumorConsumer
Head in the Cloud

MR84 - Using Mixed Antenna types against Meraki Spec 🏴‍☠️

Hello!

 

I have a MR84 that I am using both a dual band sector antenna (MA-ANT-27) and a dual band omni (

MA-ANT-20) on. I have squeaky clean wireless environment (in the country) and a low number of users (30 max on the entire network doing basically nothing - texting on Signal and iMessage mostly) so throughput isn't as important as coverage and I seem to not be lacking in either category. When I go into the dashboard config to the lower left where I can change the antenna profile, unlike my MR74s, I only have one choice which is to default to the config for the ANT-27. So the omni's are being treated like the ANT-27 in some way?

 

Im wondering if anybody knows what negatives I might not be noticing. Again, everything looks good. My directional hits an AP across a long courtyard and provides ample bandwidth to it. My omni's absolutely rock and hit APs in buildings across a 70 yard field with 100mbit+ mesh speed confirmed w download and speed test. So everything seems fine. 

 

Source doc for my consternation about MR84 - https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Radio_Settings/Transmit_Power_and_Antenna_Configuration

Networking geek since high school where I got half of a CCNA. Played Marathon II and Infinity over localtalk.
Made many a network over the years, now de facto admin of a retreat center with some of this fine Meraki hardware.
Fortune 100 Tech veteran/refugee.
2 REPLIES 2
RumorConsumer
Head in the Cloud

Crap @PhilipDAth already got me! https://community.meraki.com/t5/Wireless-LAN/Can-we-mix-two-types-of-antenna-sector-antenna-and-omni...

Networking geek since high school where I got half of a CCNA. Played Marathon II and Infinity over localtalk.
Made many a network over the years, now de facto admin of a retreat center with some of this fine Meraki hardware.
Fortune 100 Tech veteran/refugee.

To follow up - I had an extra set of dual band Omni's and stuck them on the antenna ports that the directional had been on. My inconsistent upload and download speeds seem to be completely resolved from the change. I will report back if that changes in any way.

 

For the record, what I was seeing was jerky performance during downloads and speed tests, and very asymmetrical uploads (were much faster) and downloads (were much slower). Thanks for this great thread. 

Networking geek since high school where I got half of a CCNA. Played Marathon II and Infinity over localtalk.
Made many a network over the years, now de facto admin of a retreat center with some of this fine Meraki hardware.
Fortune 100 Tech veteran/refugee.
Get notified when there are additional replies to this discussion.
Welcome to the Meraki Community!
To start contributing, simply sign in with your Cisco account. If you don't yet have a Cisco account, you can sign up.
Labels