Mobile RF Devices

[Terry015]

Hi: I have a client that utilizes mobile RF devices ie, fork lift and other devices in a warehouse environment. The connect to an application called Prism. We are having trouble with these devices as they go betwenn ap's loosing connection to the application. Any ideas?

[mmmmmmark]

Was a survey done to ensure no dead spots? My guess would be that there isn't enough coverage. If that's the case, you'd need to move your access points around or increase the number of access points.

[Terry015]

We have a survey scheduled for next week, we increased the environment from 13 mixed hp and cisco ap's to 26 meraki ap's. The issue I just can't figure out is some of the devices can connect throughout the plant but some rf devices only in certain areas. Loaded the application on a laptop and had it go all over facility and never lost connection. Believe it could be the rf device itself, but most are same make and model?

[mmmmmmark]

Are these easily replaceable units? Maybe their antenna are damaged? On the Meraki side, maybe fire up a second SSID and add one of the units that has issues to that SSID and see how that goes?

[Terry015]

We have went from bridging mode to layer 3 roaming

[PhilipDAth]

If there is only a single VLAN then you should be using the bridging mode option.

[ITMgrDrok]

We had the same issue with RF guns (barcode scanners) in a warehouse environment. In our case there were a lot of settings in the device that needed to be tweaked, things that are typically auto-negotiated on modern devices.  Also some of our older devices don't work well at all on WPA and we had to setup highly restricted WEP SSIDs for them.

[Drew]

As stated earlier, an onsite survey is the best way to verify.  That being said a couple things that could be looked into, is what type of security does the SSID use? We've had environments where we have to allow WPA1 and WPA2 mixed mode for some devices.  Also could be a roaming issue.  What is the minimum bitrate you have set on the SSID?  The default being 1 Mbps, which often makes the roaming awful between APs as the device clings to the original AP it associated to.  If the devices support it, enabling 802.11r may help as well.