User complains of Internet dropping but no evidence of that

[edugg65]

Hello,

I work help desk for a small health organization. We had a user place a ticket that whenever she is in her office/hallway her "internet is dropping" on her laptop and on the iPads in the same hallway that we use for translation with some of our foreign patients. 

The thing is I don't see any Internet drops or connection interruptions on the meraki dashboard with any of the clients she mentioned. I have spoken with her about the issue, I asked if she gets any prompts from Citrix that connection was lost, she has not. I asked if her internet stops loading, it doesn't. I ask if she has to ever reconnect to the SSID, she does not. I ask if any of the programs run slower, they don't. The only thing she says happens is that sometimes when she tries to send medications off, they will error out, but she does not know it happens until some one tells her and she goes and looks and it says "Error" beside the medication she tried to send. That error does not give any details.

I setup a computer to run a continuous ping test and after an hour I reviewed it and it never dropped and the ping only ever dropped to 89ms so it had a strong signal the whole time. There is an access point in the department, it is about 30 feet away and then there is an access point on the 2nd floor almost directly above this hallway.

Is there anything else I should look for? I have even checked the event logs on their laptop to see if there were any connections drops and there was nothing. 

[MartinLL]

Could it be a roaming issue? Check the wireless client roaming log and look for long or rapid roams between the two access points, or intra ap roaming between 2,4 and 5 GHz for example. 

[edugg65]

Looks like one of APs needs a firmware update so I am doing that tonight so we can see the Roaming Analytics, but under the connection history over the last week she does have several "Connected to SSID for one minute then the client roamed" statuses. It's a mix between the two APs mentioned above and then one that's the opposite hall across from her and on the 2nd floor, not sure why she would even be connecting to that one.

Hopefully the Roaming analytics tomorrow can shed more light. In the mean time what would be something to look at to help with the roaming bouncing that much?

[BlakeRichardson]

Maybe reduce the TX power on the 2nd floor unit. Wifi clients can connect to odd access points some times, there are so many variables when it comes to wireless signal which is why site surveys are crucial. 

Have you checked her DNS settings to make sure nothing odd is going on there. 

[edugg65]

Yeah no weird DNS settings. We did just rebuild one of our Domain Controllers in early Dec, but according to this end-user this has been happening even before then

[MartinLL]

The first thing i would try is to adjust the bit rate for 2,4 and 5Ghz bands under the radio profiles.

Try setting it to 18 on both bands for example. Be aware that you might lose some REALLY old clients if you have them. But if that’s an issue turn the bitrate back down on 2.4Ghz and connect them there. Or you could create a new SSID for these devices and du pr. ssid bit rate tuning instead.

But most likely it will be just fine. Better even since higher bitrates improves roaming performance.

[PhilipDAth]

A common issue I run into is WiFi power savings on notebooks.  Usually it only happens when running on battery.  Sometimes the battery has to be below a certain level.  It is vendor dependent.  The issue occurs intermittently (oth the prior conditions have to be met for it to happen).  Could be fine in the morning, problematic in the afternoon.

What happens is the WiFi NIC is powered down for short periods of time to save power.  No disconnection happens, but no packets can be sent or received during this time.

I'm guessing the test computer you setup was plugged into mains power?

Not all NICs expose the power saving settings - so you often can not configure it from the GUI.  Run the two below commands from an administrative command prompt, reboot, and then see if the issue is resolved.

powercfg /SETDCVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT 19cbb8fa-5279-450e-9fac-8a3d5fedd0c1 12bbebe6-58d6-4636-95bb-3217ef867c1a 0
powercfg /SETACVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT 19cbb8fa-5279-450e-9fac-8a3d5fedd0c1 12bbebe6-58d6-4636-95bb-3217ef867c1a 0

[edugg65]

Funny enough you post that. I did have this issue with some Lenovo laptops just last month. Had to run that exact prompt to adjust the power settings for those bad boys.

We haven't had issues out of some of the Dell laptops we have, but might as well throw it on hers as well. The concern for me is that it's happening with iPads as well which I found odd cause they have 3 in that department alone and according to the end users down there, they have no issues out of them unless they are down that hallway.