Wireless AP Going Down Randomly, can't determine root cause

[djames]

We have 10 access points that all have been working GREAT, except for one AP that has been having intermittent issues over the past 4 months. It will randomly go down without rhyme or reason and the only way to get it back online is a reboot of the equipment. Unfortunately though this AP is located in one of our remote offices that is 3 hours away so I always have to get a standard user to do this, which isn't always an option at 8PM when the AP goes down.

Has anyone else seen similar issues with their AP? What troubleshooting steps should I look to? I checked the event logs but I don't see anything of note for when the outage on the AP begins. 

[vassallon]

@djames 

I would suspect either a cabling issue or an AP issue. The "easiest" method is to try another AP in that location and see if the issue occurs then you can focus on cabling. 

Another possible cause could be an overloaded switch that does not have enough power to fulfill PoE requirements.

[djames]

I had a user in the office swap the cable on the AP and the issue still persisted...weirdly enough it stopped going down for the past ~35 days then just had two consecutive days with outages. 

[vassallon]

Does this cable go from the switch directly to the AP? If so, then I would suspect an issue with the AP. 

Is this location polluted with other wireless near by? This can cause unexpected AP behavior.

Is the AP running the latest firmware as well?

[RSU21it]

I had a similar case where one AP out of 49 did this, including randomly rebooting itself.  In my case, I did a factory reset on that problem AP and it's been fine for about a year now so there is an outside chance this could fix your problem AP as well.  Maybe worth a try.

[djames]

I will look into this if the troubleshooting I've gotten so far fails...the issue for me is we have 10 APs; 8 in NE FL, 1 in another NE FL office and the other in central FL. I only have physical access to 9 easily. The central FL AP is the one having issues and the one I can't easily get to without a 4+ hr trip. 

Would I be able to do a remote factory reset and retain settings or would I need to be on-site to perform this?

[RSU21it]

There is no way to do a remote factory reset that I'm aware but it might be worth calling Meraki support to verify this as well as have them look at the connectivity timeline from the back end which will provide them more detailed logs of the AP.  These logs will be more precise that what we can see in our dashboard if I recall.

[PhilipDAth]

When the AP shows as offline - does it continue working?