Association errors on wireless network

[Tigers]

Gudday all

I have been in my work here now for 8 months. In that time there has being a consistent problem with Androids, iPhones, iPads, but strangely not laptops, not getting wireless access.

At times it seemed that none of these devices could access our wireless. My own Android had 7 months of no access.

As I began to wander the Meraki portal and check configurations I noticed that 1 WAP had its primary DNS set for our French parents DNS rather than the local Australia DNS. Once I changed that the ability to get onto the network improved dramatically. Even my Android could finally log on (not sure why 1 WAP configuration error could affect the whole network).

Now the problem is that the internet is unavailable so many times. More looking at the portal showed many association failures (we can get 2/3 association failures on a bad day).

As an example here is the result of my trying to put  a new Android onto the wireless today (19/11).

What exactly is an association failure in this context?

What are my next steps?

If i could reduce the complaints and decrease the association errors my work would be impressed.

Tim Knell

[PhilipDAth]

Is anything showing up under Airmarshall?

Have you got any unusual settings like a high minimum connection speed (12Mb/s is a good choice)?

What encryption settings are you using?  WPA2-Enterprise mode?

[BlakeRichardson]

Can you confirm the following.

1. Radio setting 2.4 / 5Ghz or both?

2. Authentication method - Radius, PSK?

3. Encryption method

Association errors usually mean that device isn't connecting to the network properly or something is stopping it before it can authenticate . Can you post a screenshot of the SSID settings blurry any confidential info if neeed. 

[Tigers]

I have not touched this thread since Nov. 2021. In the meantime w e had an outside 'expert' look at our Wi-Fi. that was a waste of time and money.

In the last 2 weeks our helpdesk is reporting multiple notices from Meraki about clients failing to connect to the network. Nearly all seem to be Android devices to me at least.

I have attached some screen shots from our portal with some information. Authentication is the step failing most often. 

Is this something blinding obvious I am missing or is most information required?

[Tigers]

1. We are using both bands - 2.4GHz & 5GHz

2. Authentication is PSK

3. Encryption is WPA-2

From Air Marshall

[Tigers]

Also note I discovered that we have a MS220-8P switch that is acting as a WAP. Some devices try to attach to it. This switch has a DHCP address rather than statically assigned. Would that make  a difference?

At present this switch is not appearing under the Access Points on the portal. Is it possible to have it appear there?

[BlakeRichardson]

I am not sure what you mean as a switch acting as an access point. 

Do you have only one vendor of wireless access point or multiple? 

[Tigers]

Looking at the portal the switch seems to have wireless clients

All our WAPs (MR54, 52) are Meraki and is the switch in question.

[George_UC]

I'm presenting the same situation, could you solve association problem @Tigers 

[Tigers]

George

We use Zscaler as our VPN client. When I removed and reloaded the Zscaler certificate on some Androids (Samsung A50s) that enabled them to log onto our wireless network. I have thus removed about 30 clients who used to flag errors. A small improvement. But does not seem to work earlier models esp. Samsung A3Xs

[Tigers]

I also removed the Aruba MS220-8P off the network. Reorganised the location of some of our WAPs becque of interference. These too seemed to make a difference. My errors are now cumulatively down by about 15%.