Wifi roaming issue with static devices, Meraki , AP CW9176I MR 32.1.4

[JustinMC]

Morning all,

first post and new member, recently we have moved from catalyst Wi-Fi to meraki with CW9176 Aps with Wi-Fi 7 and are having horrific experience with ap hopping, we have changed every pc setting and option but clients who are static at desk are moving across 8-10 aps within a minute and then eventually hit an issue and get a disconnect.  most are working with real time systems so even momentarily loss is impacting work, people are getting teams meetings dropped. I'm thinking of scrapping the whole thing and going back to wired.,

[RWelch]

Welcome @JustinMC - is client balancing enabled?  Have you disabled it as part of your testing?

Client Balancing 

[JustinMC]

thanks, yes TAC recommended that, no improvement

[PhilipDAth]

Make sure you configure an RF Profile.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Operate_and_Maintain/User_Guides/Radio_Settings/RF_Profiles

Most companies should be using the "Open Office" Profile.

ps. This will also disable "Client Balancing" by default.

[cmr]

Adding to what Philip said, make sure the power levels are not too high, a client should not be seeing 8-10 APs at the same time!

[JustinMC]

cheers both, checking profiles and power levels now.  

[RaphaelL]

Do you have AI-RRM enabled ? Also MR 32.1.4 is beta. I would run MR 31.1.8 instead.

[stgonzo]

In the connection logs errors are you seeing - reason='reserved' 

[jbright]

I have also seen some other bugs in the 32.1.4 code running on CW APs and have a ticket open with Meraki TAC for them. I would also recommend running 31.1.8 code too.

[BikramGhadei]

I have faced similar issue with MAC laptops in our office (While sitting idle as well as roaming). I just changed the 802.11r mode to adaptive and WPA encryption to WPA2 only.

After that it stopped unnecessary roaming issues while sitting. But roaming issue while moving is still there and i am working with Meraki support for solution.

Hope it helps.

[JustinMC]

Thanks all, really appreciate the input, currently vendor is working through a process with TAC, provided all your advice and we are agreeing what to do.  

[sub0]

Hi, I am having similar issue with CW9176i model, users even get disconnected while stationary. I reduced power to reduce overlap and increased bitrate from 12 to 24 but still same. Did you get any solution?

[JustinMC]

Morning all

just to share TAC involved now for a while and the vendor sent me the below last night, matches a comment above from Bikram

One additional recommendation from TAC, based on similar customer environments, is to disable 802.11r when WPA3 is enabled. Fast roaming features such as 802.11r can conflict with WPA3’s mandatory 802.11w settings, particularly on the CW9176 platform.

Although not officially confirmed, the Meraki engineering team is aware of roaming issues on CW9176 that appear to be linked to WPA3. Given the similarities between our case and the scenario under investigation, we requested that our case be associated with the internal engineering ticket. However, TAC could not confirm whether our situation is an exact match (of course I understand they are relaying on matching logs). We are pushing TAC and have asked TAC to maintain the case at Severity 1.

[sub0]

We always had 802.11r disabled, also using latest firmware - 31.1.8. 

[JustinMC]

Thank you all, Monday we have a TAC session between 3 and 4 and will share their findings.  for today i turned off a second SSID we were setting up for EAPTLS with corporate laptops and the other guest internet SSID suddenly started working!!  so currently no device roaming, no drops and all looks good.  TAC have also admitted there is a separate ongoing investigation into the CW9176I ap due to customer issues.