Problem with select MacBook devices connecting to our network

[CCHS_Chris]

I am managing a school network with 13 Meraki AP's and around 300 devices (both school issued chromebooks and personal devices both windows & MacOS).   For the last few months, everything connects fine except for 2 specific student MacBook Pro devices.    Both devices can see all 4 of our SSID's, but when trying to connect, it just won't.   It doesn't even get so far as to ask for the network password - it just spins and then stops trying to connect.      Both devices connect successfully at home and on every other network.   These two devices are running OS 12.5.1 and OS 12.4.     They have been restarted... Renewed lease... WiFi off and back on...    These two student CAN connect to their cell phone hotspots in our building, just not our network.     We also have several dozen other MacBook devices all connecting successfully.     

I have had another Meraki user & IT specialist out to help troubleshoot with no luck.   

Anyone with advice or experiencing anything similar?

[alemabrahao]

What type of authentication are you using?

https://hcsonline.com/images/PDFs/Wi-FI_Apple_Devices.pdf Look on page 4.

[CCHS_Chris]

It is configured for WPA1 & WPA 2 PSK configured.    I'll compared our settings with the suggestions on page 4 of the document you shared.  

The odd thing is, we have so many other identical Mac OS devices connecting successfully... except these two.   

[RaphaelL]

What MR version and model are you running ?

Any logs in the network Event Log ?

[EJN]

Could there be a block for MAC address somewhere for those two devices? MDM? Some other security that is blocking these 2?

[CCHS_Chris]

Where would l need to look in the Meraki dashboard for a block on a specific MAC addresses?  

[rhbirkelund]

What kind of MacBook is having trouble? Select Macbook Pro M1's?

[CCHS_Chris]

One of the devices is a MacBook Air / 1.6 GHz Dual-Core intel Core i5... not an M1

The other device is a MacBook Pro, and may be an M1, I just couldnt' get access to it today to check it.

[RJordan-CCS · Accepted solution]

We had two customers that recently started having issues with MacOS wireless clients; I do not have the exact error message but the gist was that the Mac said the network required a WPA2 passphrase.  The SSID DOES have a WPA2 compliant passphrase, but some Macs gave the error.  This occurred even when the 

We ended up turning off WPA1 compatibility where it was still enabled, and switched all of the SSIDs to WPA3 transition mode (support WPA2 and WPA3).  That pretty much stopped the complaints.  Not sure if it was related to a recent AP firmware update, but the Macbooks in question had Mojave, Catalina, and whatever the latest OS versions (maybe a newer one too).  One M1, the rest were intels.

So far no complaints from old WPA1 only devices losing connectivity.

[CCHS_Chris]

This solution worked!!   Thank you so much.   It's something that neither our IT managing company and an IT professional that we brought in could figure out.   

- Grateful.

[alemabrahao]

Great, but it looks more like a behavior on MAC devices than some problem It relates to the firmware of the access points, but the important thing is that it was solved.