Apple MAC users are disconnecting frequently

[RajeshKumar]

Apple MAC devices like MACbook Air and Macbook Pro users are frequently getting disconnected from the Wi-Fi and they have to connect manually to the SSID again. We are using the .1x authentication and this disconnection happens even when stable at one location.

Also seeing lot of "Request Timeouts" during zoom calls and observing so much disturbance during meetings.

Kindly suggest if anyone has this issue or what troubleshoot steps can be taken in to consideration for resolving this issue.

Thanks

P Rajesh Kumar

[BlakeRichardson]

What are you using as a Radius server, NPS or something else? 

I manage a network with 600+ Apple MacBooks on using 802.1x and never had the issue you have described. 

[RajeshKumar]

Hello Richardson,

I am using NPS as authentication server.

[SurajRumpal]

Hi Blake,

For our network we have the NPS role running from a windows sever 2022 azure Vm. This is connected back to our firewall via site to site. Is there any tweaks or recommendations you can advise? 

[ChristophJ]

What version of MacOS are they running? There was a bug in MacOS 10 that causes disconnects due to the AWDL interface: https://www.meter.com/mac-osx-awdl-psa
I had a few users reporting disconnects until I updated them to the latest MacOS release.

[RajeshKumar]

Hello ChristophJ

Thanks for sharing your inputs

let me check the version to see if that’s the issue.

will revert back to you by tomorrow

[SurajRumpal]

Hi Rajesh,

I am experiencing the exact same issue. I am getting users complain every couple of hours when on calls. I have been on support with meraki engineers for the last week and they have got me making changes but this has not fixed the main issues. We have disabled client balancing and made changes to our radius.

[TBHPTL]

Had a similar issue early this year with macs and socket exhaustion issues, wherein if the application is made by Apple the OS recycles sockets just fine however if you have third party agents running, not so much. (unavoidable, IMO, if you are part of a large corporate entity) . This issue is further exasperated by the fact that most mac users simply close the lid on their laptops. In fact Apple recommended work around is to actually shut the laptop down at the end of the day and begin each day with a fresh boot. This will mitigate the socket issues but it doesn't make it go away. Not saying this is the cause of your issues but ill bet its not helping.  If you don't have applecare support, you probably should pay for it.  They will walk you through what you need to do to enable the appropriate logging

[SurajRumpal]

Unfortunately the problem is still occurring. I think this a more Meraki AP issue rather than client issue. When users are connected to other Ads like Cisco Catalyst or HP Arubu they have no issues with connections or roaming etc. 

Not sure what else we can do.

[RLNG]

Are you using WPA3?

[SurajRumpal]

Nope. Still on WPA2 

[TBHPTL]

https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Cross-Platform_Content/Meraki_Health_Overvie...

[UKDanJones]

Meraki can be quite aggressive with 802.11v - have you done any over the air packet captures to see if it’s 802.11v kicking off the clients? With an Apple + Meraki network a good design is paramount. 

the only time I’ve seen this happen even with a good design is when a client was using zscaler and it was an issue between zscaler and macOS that was causing issues. If they removed zscaler the issue went away. In the end they replaced zscaler with Palo Prisma access. No more issues. 

[SurajRumpal]

Thanks Dan. The packet captures shows no issues with 802.11v. It seems the issues seem to be MacBooks which is wearied as apple Imacs and other iOS devices are fine.