Certain AP's continusly go offline and when I forget clients the come back online

Hill16
Conversationalist

Certain AP's continusly go offline and when I forget clients the come back online

Hi we are having a conference on one of our floors, we had a group of users in a room connecting to an MR42 AP, probably about 16 people with PC's and phones, the AP kept going offline and I've deleted clients on that AP from the dashboard and its come back online, this has also happened to another two or three AP's on that floor. There are a lot of people roaming around the floor with phones etc. Has anyone got thoughts of what might be causing this or any guidance

6 Replies 6
BrechtSchamp
Kind of a big deal

When you say going offline, what do you mean? Showing offline in the dashboard? No longer broadcasting the SSID? No longer passing traffic for connected clients?

 

Any idea how many clients were connected to a single access point?

Hill16
Conversationalist

Hi, AP showing offline in the dashboard, there were about 30 clients connected to the AP. so say for example clients in room are connected to AP 07`, it will go offline and I have to remove clients, another access point AP 09 which is two rooms down from AP 07 is also going offline. The strange thing is the group of users who are in the room where AP 07 is where on a different floor yesterday and where having the same issues while connected to other AP's. Other groups in other rooms are not having these AP issues so its pointing towards the group themselves which is strange

BrechtSchamp
Kind of a big deal

That is strange indeed. Anything showing up in Network-wide > Monitor > Event log?

Hill16
Conversationalist

looking at the AP's in the event log the only warning message I can see is "802.11 association rejected for load balancing". Does this point to anything

MerakiDave
Meraki Employee
Meraki Employee

Depending on the firmware version you are using you might want to try toggling the Client Balancing setting in whichever RF profile the APs are associated to, check under Wireless > Radio Settings and click into the RF Profiles page and edit the RF Profile they are assigned to.  

 

While on that page, also make sure you are following other common best-practice settings, such as disabling the lowest couple of bit rates on each radio (perhaps try a minimum of 12Mbps) and limit the transmit power to better match the clients.  If you look at the overview page you can see which AP radios are transmitting at which power levels.  

 

You may need to take a look at your AP placement and do a site survey walk through to make sure the coverage and overlap is appropriate.  It is always the client's decision to roam to another AP.  If you are leveraging 802.11k/v the APs can try to influence a better informed decision but it's still the client's decision, and you can certainly have a client in a room with an AP but still associate to an AP in the next room or two rooms away, that is not too uncommon.

 

Toggling client balancing on/off for a period of time and noting any change in behavior could be a useful data point.  Then I'd open a ticket with Meraki Support and have them look over your config and do a firmware scrub for your specific version and they might also suggest a better alternative.

 

PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

Are you running a recent firmware on your MRs?

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