Internet connection drops or slows down on a specific AP

[rokube]

There are over 30 Wi-Fi APs (MR46) in operation at our office.

A maximum of around 80 clients are connected to each AP.

We are not sure what has changed, but we have received complaints that the Internet connection drops or slows down from certain APs.

We can monitor this using the Meraki Dashboard, and we would like to use the Dashboard to check the status of the above APs when they are not working properly and find out the cause. What kind of research would you think would go into this?

[AgungTP]

based on my experience, there are a lot of factors need to be checked,

is this something like a random user that having this issue? maybe you can start to check with 1 user and check the details of that client (connections, roaming, timeline), then see if you can get an interesting thing from that

[rokube]

> AgungTP

Thank you for the very useful information.

[cmr]

@rokube is it 80 devices per AP?  If so that is somewhat above the recommended maximum.  The recommendations for reasonable service are 30 devices per radio, so if they are evenly distributed between the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios, then you can get 60.  It is true that if most devices are only low usage then you can have more, but there is no guarantee of decent service.  Another thing to consider is how many SSIDs are broadcasting on each radio, ideally no more than three should be as each additional one uses more of the shared timeslots.  Finally, what do you have the minimum bitrate set to, anything less than 12 enables 802.11b and the associated slower multiplexing which will affect all clients.

In terms of diagnostics, have you enabled "AP neighbours" in the early access section?  That can show you which APs are struggling with packet loss etc. as below:

[rokube]

>cmr

Thank you for the very useful information.
We will continue our investigation using "AP neighbors" and other tools.