Terrible Roaming issues

[MerakiLife]

So after 5 years or so of our full stack Meraki implementation complaints in a particular area of our building are ever more increasing.  We have users who are sat working happily on 5 bars of signal strength connected to their local AP and then for no apparent reason they will then Roam over to an AP on the floor above or one at the other end of the building and the speed/connection will be so bad they'll either have 1 bar shown or it will show the globe icon "no internet".    
So a bit of back ground - Office Building is 3 floors and about 50m x 20m
We have 3 AP's on Ground floor, 6 AP's on 1t floor (as it's sectioned off in to wards) 3 AP's on top Floor

The issues are with the people who work on the 1st floor (most AP's).  I'm starting to consider we have too many AP's in that space but what is annoying most is why they are picking up AP's on the floor above or below when there is a thick concrete layer between them. Why would they do this?

I almost wish i could tell certain clients they are only allowed to connect to certain AP's which you can't quite do albeit fudge some ssid availability and create a new SSID which i don't want to do. 

I'm using basic indoor radio profiles but I did turn on the Auto RF AI radio feature but i'm not sure it has helped.  Does this override the RF profiles?

See below a user that is having massive issues and is more or less sat in between 2 AP's (W4 & W3)     

[DarrenOC]

What are the results of your wireless survey?

[MerakiLife]

We did a wireless survey 5 years ago and unfortunately it's grown organically with AP's added to plug gaps 

[alemabrahao]

My friend, a lot has changed in 5 years, simply installing more access points will not solve your coverage problem if a prior study has not been carried out.

In your case, I would consider consulting a specialist company to assess how your wireless environment is doing and validate whether a reorganization of things is necessary.

[DarrenOC]

Agree with this ^^. Even changing a rooms layout, adding/removing furniture changes your wifi propagation so should be constantly evaluated 

[Ryan_Miles]

Is it for all users/SSIDs on these APs? I see those APs have 6 SSIDs in use. Or, are only certain devices or certain SSIDs problematic and if so which ones?

Also, those APs use a RF profile in which the 5GHz band is set for max tx power of 10 dBm and a min bitrate of 24 Mbps. That's going to create really small RF cells. In a super high density environment that might be acceptable. But it's not a config I would expect to see in most routine office deployments.

All of the RSSIs in your screenshot aren't great which leads me to believe the clients are either pretty far from the APs or due to your RF profile 5GHz setting and the really small RF cells those are the best they get. Wireless clients are what make the decision to roam and if the clients sees all the APs at low & similar RSSIs it could lead to the client attempting to roam more often in search of a better signal.

You might also want to disable Client balancing on the RF profiles as see if performance changes.

[MerakiLife]

Thankyou Ryan,  these were the kind of pointers I was looking for.
You've actually made me think that maybe I have focussed too much on roaming when actually the issues stem from people who are sat in office and conference rooms. They are the ones are having the issue because they are starting on a great signal and bandwidth -  then for no real, quantifiable reason flipping to a weaker AP further away and subsequently ruining a Zoom/teams call in the process. 

Maybe I need to remove the client balancing as we're never likely to get much more that 40 people on 1 AP ever.  I think I should have enough for dual/overlapping AP coverage in every placement.

I just find it odd that I can be sat right underneath an AP yet sometimes my client will still connect to or pick up and inferior AP. 

May I add that my IPhone works perfectly anywhere in the building with max strength everywhere, all the time it's just Windows laptops and Andorid phones that the issue is with mostly!

[wifijanitor]

Keep in mind that it is the client that makes the join/roam decision and not the AP.

Also keep in mind that Windows Update does not typically update the Wireless NIC drivers, you need to pull it from the manufacturers site and package that yourself, or teach your users how to do the upgrade themselves.

This might improve the clients that are roaming to less optimal AP. And yes I also agree that you should disable the client load balancing feature.

If all of the above still doesn't resolve most of the roaming issues, having a site survey performed to evaluate the way the network currently looks, after adding AP that were not in the original plans, should be a big help in seeing what is going on in the RF.

[GIdenJoe]

What power are your AP's transmitting at?  Do you have decent dual AP coverage on each floor individually.  Are you using client balancing and if yes do you have alot of clients on your AP's?  Is there interference?

The Meraki dashboard has already given you clues that clients are doing suboptimal roams whichs means you probably have a combination of too many clients on single AP's and not enough secondary AP coverage causing your office clients to roam to AP's too far away.

The best course of action now is to invest in a site survey from a professional that can measure primary signal strength, secondary, airtime and interference that will probably result in shifting some AP's around and tuning the channel plans and signalstrengths and perhaps remove AP's in some areas but add them in others.

[UKDanJones]

You should definitely get an RF assessment done by a professional wireless engineer. They should ask about your requirements (how your company uses the WLAN - I suspect this has changed quite a bit from 5 years ago). 

Be prepared… you’re probably going to need to move the APs you have. Designing for coverage (what I suspect you have now) and changing to designing for capacity/roaming are very different things. 

[fcsokie1]

Do your corporate devices have Realtek WLAN adapters by chance? We experienced a similar problem last year and ultimately determined that Realtek WLAN adapters went into these frequent roams and disconnects due to issues with 802.11k. I worked the issue all the way up thru HP engineering and they had Realtek developers build a new driver for me that fixed the issue. Just wanted to share.

[DevOps_RC]

Good Morning. All of the suggestions above are very valid, but I'll through in another one/two/few. We had similar issues with Intel chip wireless nics as @fcsokie1 had with Realtek adapters, we updated them and resolved some unnecessary roaming. While it's not a wireless survey, the 'AP Neighbors' EA feature, can show co-channel interference and gives an indication of neighbor signal strength. Lastly, we switched off the client load balancing and band steering functions within the Meraki dashboard and that alleviated some unnecessary roaming. Just my useless two cents.

[UKDanJones]

These things can help but nothing beats a proper survey and design. The issue with Wi-Fi is that is super resilient so works even if it’s implementation is terrible. 

[Meraki_Manoj]

Hey,

Are you still facing this issue or is it resolved now?