Client Balancing/Roaming in reception area ?

[Thygesen]

Hi all You sharp Meraki's 😁

I have been wondering .. (and that's always a good start) ..

We have a customer with a one-entrance reception area/waiting lounge ..

This means, that both guests and all employees enter through this area, and meets the customers Meraki wireless here first time.

This ALSO means, that a -lot- of transit associations take place.. and sometimes client balancing takes occur.
We also see that some anchor issues associated with this client behaviour, when employees scatter throughout the campus after entering the main entrance ..

So:

Is there a way to shorten the roaming / change behaviour for the AP located in the reception area to avoid issues for the staff working there, also of this AP ?

What are Your experiences and pref's with this roaming thing ?

Waiting on the edge of the chair ..
Thyge

[cmr · Accepted solution]

@Thygesen a few things you can try:

• Reduce transmit power on this AP so that the signal drops off faster as you move away
• Increase minimum bit rate as well, for the same result
• Split the employee / guest SSIDs onto different bands, we put guests on 2.4 and have corporate devices on either 5 or both.

[Thygesen]

@cmrThose are good suggestions!
The split also somewhat sounds good, but the number of clients on the greeting AP will remain the same ?

It does not seem as it will affect the "Anchor" function .. As I read the doc's it means, that everybody will get the greeting AP / reception area as anchor, since that is the first encounter with the Wifi, and when leaving for the other parts of the campus, the anchor will stay ?

[cmr]

There are two radios in each MR (2.4 and 5) and it is the number of clients per radio that matters for local connections.  The anchor is only for layer-3 roaming SSIDs, are you using them then, and if so why?  They are only needed if the same SSID has different subnets underneath it, i.e. 10.1.1.0/24 at reception and 10.1.2.0/24 somewhere else on site.

[Thygesen]

@cmrGood point with the radios. When split, there will only be competition on the 2.4Ghz, if we so choose. The SSID is deployed across multiple subnets / areas of the campus.

So .. in fact: 2 options: Tune the power down/bitrate to avoid stickiness and lock ie the guest-net to 2.4Ghz.?

[cmr]

Another option would to have the guest SSID tunnel back to an MX, that would remove the layer-3 roaming load from the MR in reception.