Association Failure

[carl222]

Hi,

We just deployed 12 new MR52 in a warehouse. We have around 20 RF scanners that supports 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz. Employees are complaining about slowness and performance issue with these scanners. In wireless health, I see about "40% fail to associate" in the last hour. I know that these scanners are in "Auto Mode" for 2.4 and 5Ghz and Meraki also tells me 2.4 and 5 Ghz capabilities in the client page. Screenshots:

Latency is also very high (400ms) for these APs.

Band steering is enabled because I want these RF scanners to go on the 5Ghz (2.4Ghz average utilization is 75-80%).

Thank you

[ww]

How high are the APs from the ground.

What db does the scanner/client report on the dashboard client page

Do the scanners  have some  power saving mode?

Any additional info  in the event log?

[carl222]

Half of them are mounted on roof truss at 26-foot level. Other half are 9 foot off floor. They are between 20 and 40 dB. Most of them are above 30 dB. They run Android so yes they have a power saving option (not enabled). Logs are full of : " Client attempted to associate XX times on the 5 GHz band ". Some authentication errors but nothing alarming.

I just found out that the problematic guns are set-up to use 5 Ghz only.

Thanks

[PhilipDAth]

How are they associating?  WPA2-PSK?

There isn't an old system still hanging around using the same SSID?

[carl222]

Yes WPA2-PSK.

We need to keep WPA1 for older RF scanners that we still use for now.

Older scanners are using the 2.4Ghz and WPA1. Channel utilization is very high for 2.4Ghz so even these guns are having problems.

I think they used the same SSID as the old APs. You think there might be an old AP still around ?

[PhilipDAth]

>You think there might be an old AP still around ?

That is exactly what I was thinking.  Either roaming to an old AP not connected and then roaming back, or the old AP has "security" enabled and is sending disassociation requests.

You could test this by creating a new additional SSID, and re-configure one scanner to use that, and see if the issues for that one scanner stop happening.

[carl222]

Thank you! I'll try that Monday.

[carl222]

@PhilipDAth 

In Wireshark, on almost every APs, I see thousands of broadcast deauthentication frames sent by the same 5 SSIDs by a slightly different broadcast MACs (According to AirMarshal). The SSIDs are being seen by all our 30 APs, and Manufacture is Aruba (No clue where it's coming from).

Any ideas ?

Thanks

[BigWill]

DId you ever resolve this I am currently having this issue I want my RF scanners to 5ghz since the 2.4 is congested.