MR32 Randomly going Offline

[itguy80]

Good afternoon, I'm new to this forum and the Meraki products.  I just took over managing a very small network that has an MX84 router/security appliance and 2 MR32 access points.  Yesterday both access points started dropping offline from the network around 1:00/1:30 in the afternoon.  They would drop off for several minutes and then reconnect for several minutes.  While connected, the internet would be extremely slow. 

I did some basic troubleshooting and it was just those two devices plugged into the MX84.  Our switch along with all the hardwired devices were staying connected just fine.  I tried powering down the AP's and moving them to new ports.  This dropping continued this morning and then around 2pm everything just started working again.  So far things have stayed online and it now almost 5pm.  

Questions:

1. where this whole system is "cloud based" would there have been something on the Cisco side that would have caused this sort of behavior?  An outage or glitch affecting the Meraki service?

2. The AP's are using POE injectors, could those be failing (two at the same time) causing power issues.  Although everything has now been running for several hours.  

I'm just trying to come up with possible causes and troubleshooting steps if this continues to happen. 

[PhilipDAth]

>1. where this whole system is "cloud based" would there have been something on the Cisco side that would have caused this sort of behavior?  An outage or glitch affecting the Meraki service?

No.  The cloud is only used for management.  It is not involved in the data plane or operation.

>2. The AP's are using POE injectors, could those be failing (two at the same time) causing power issues.  Although everything has now been running for several hours.  

Possible but does not seem probably.

You should log into the dashboard and look at Wireless health when you are having an issue.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Wireless_Health 

[itguy80]

Yes, that's one of the places I was in quite a bit trying to figure this out.  

[vassallon]

@itguy80 

We had MR34s behaving badly until we did the following upgrade:

MR 26.5 → MR 26.6.1

Since then the MR34s have been solid since we went to 26.6.1. We used to have to restart them regularly until we went to 26.6.1 as the MR34 just stopped accepting connections.

[vassallon]

@itguy80 

What version of firmware are the APs on? 

[cmr]

And we're they recently upgraded from a different one?

We have ~20 MR32s on 26.6.1 and one has now stopped working with availability looking like the below:

We are bringing it back to the office to see what the matter is with it.

[itguy80]

MX 14.40

AP Current version: MR 26.6.1

The above devices were running an older firmware.  I did apply the newest firmware this afternoon once everything was back up.  The AP's were dropping so frequently and losing connection from the MX that I was afraid to try a firmware update until they had been online for more than 5 minutes.  But after being online for about an hour I update the firmware on everything.  

It's now just after 5:30pm and everything is running smooth again.  

[vassallon]

What firmware were the APs previously running?

[itguy80]

Took me a minute to find it:

MR 25.11 → MR 26.6.1

MX 14.39 → MX 14.40

[vassallon]

@itguy80 

I would expect you to have much better AP performance now, the firmware you were on was quite old and I know Meraki has made quite a few improvements since then.

[NolanHerring]

I would first confirm if the device is losing power or not, and to do that (yes i know this is crazy) you have to waste your time and contact Meraki support for them to give you the up-time. I would do that right after one of these 'outages', and that should help point you in the right direction depending on the results.