Decreasing Internet Quality on Channel 2.4 Ghz on Meraki Access Point MR-34

[kusumanegarait]

Hello everyone,

I have a problem with my MR34. I feel decreasing in connection quality. I give 6 Mbps for either upload or download. But, every I do the speed test, it needs a long time to get that speed. Maybe it needs 3-4 times to reach that traffic limit. After I opened the RF live monitor in the access point. It has high traffic and high interference. Even though, the connected client is only 6. What is the real problem? But, in the wireless monitor, there's no signal overlapping. What can I do to solve this problem? Please help me, thank you

[PhilipDAth]

Don't use 2.4Ghz if you want performance.   It is anyways problematic.  I would disable 2.4Ghz if you can  

[kusumanegarait]

Maybe this is the right choice. But, I still have many users that use b/g/n wireless adapter.

[PhilipDAth]

At a minimum, make sure you enable band steering to encourage those clients with 5Ghz radio to use that band instead of 2.4ghz.

[kusumanegarait]

@PhilipDAth I have also been applying that setting. 

[NolanHerring]

Go to Wireless>RF Spectrum

Click the AP in question and then click the Interfering APs tab and see what your results are. Your client perspective might be very different from your AP's.

Its also very possible that there is a good amount of non-wifi interference. The built-in AP spectrum analyzer in my experience isn't the most reliable, so your probably not going to be seeing everything that is really going on.

If you remove the throughput limit, what results do you get?

Even though you only have a few clients on that AP, there could be so much going on near you on 2.4GHz that its just not reliable. The escape route as @PhilipDAth mentioned is to get on 5GHz if possible.

With all that being said - I will mention that I know someone else was also having specific throughput issues with the MR34 on 2.4GHz radio. What firmware are you running? I would ask support to change that specific AP to 24.12 and then run the test again and see what you get in case this is the same issue.

[kusumanegarait]

@NolanHerring. Here the result of RF Spectrum. Can you help me to explain about this? I haven't tried to remove the limit yet. I will try to replace the MR34 with other series for the first. I'm using firmware version 25.13. 

[NolanHerring]

In your original spectrum android view, I could only see maybe 2 or 3 neighboring networks on the same channel. But as you can see, your access point can see many more (and I would imagine its more if you expand the list). So there is a good deal of competition for channel 6 alone, no way of knowing for sure how much contention there is channel utilization wise.

The built in spectrum tool gives you an 'idea' but my experiences with it have been lack luster so I tend not to believe everything it shows me.

It's possible that with all the CCI your seeing, there simply isnt' much you can do to improve it, other than move to 5GHz.

However, I case this is the bug i'm referring to earlier with specifically the MR34 model and 2.4GHz throughput issues, I would say swap out the AP with a different model (or just place one on a desk nearby and test). Or contact support, have them downgrade to 24.12 and try again. That will confirm if its the environment, or firmware issue.

[kusumanegarait · Accepted solution]

@NolanHerring It has better performance for now after I changed the channel with channel 1. But, I'm still monitoring this in the future. Because the non 802.11 interference is still high, but the performance is better seemingly.

Thank you for your time. I will update this message again if there's an progress.