Wireless performance is bad after new AP install

[palmtree]

We recently upgraded our shop and added a couple of Meraki APs. Wireless performance has been pretty bad. Support keeps pushing us to perform a site survey; is this actually required?

[MerakiJockey505]

Hello palmtree,

I had this same issue previously with a few different solutions.  At one site we added a few new AP's to an existing network stocked with MR34's.  The new AP's were MR42's.  We experienced much lower connection success as well as load balancing issues.  One of the easiest steps we tried was to make sure they all had up-to-date firmware.  That fixed the issue temporarily.  Secondly, we rebooted all of the AP's to enable the load balancing to reconfigure.  That also fixed the issues for a while.  We ended up having to change our default Radio Settings to allow either just 2.4 GHz connection with 20 MHz C-Width of just 5 GHz with 80 MHz C-width.  That seems to give us the highest success rate.  We did have a few issues after but nothing as widespread.  Also another thing we tried was removing the Ap's from the network and adding them back.. It seems to be strange solution but it has worked on more than one occasion.

[BHC_RESORTS]

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@MerakiJockey505 wrote:

Hello palmtree,

I had this same issue previously with a few different solutions.  At one site we added a few new AP's to an existing network stocked with MR34's.  The new AP's were MR42's.  We experienced much lower connection success as well as load balancing issues.  One of the easiest steps we tried was to make sure they all had up-to-date firmware.  That fixed the issue temporarily.  Secondly, we rebooted all of the AP's to enable the load balancing to reconfigure.  That also fixed the issues for a while.  We ended up having to change our default Radio Settings to allow either just 2.4 GHz connection with 20 MHz C-Width of just 5 GHz with 80 MHz C-width.  That seems to give us the highest success rate.  We did have a few issues after but nothing as widespread.  Also another thing we tried was removing the Ap's from the network and adding them back.. It seems to be strange solution but it has worked on more than one occasion.

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Wait, do you have the 5ghz band set to 80mhz? I'm curious how that works in dense environments. We run 40mhz max. 80mhz tends to be too noisy for our environments.

[MRCUR]

@BHC_RESORTS We use the "auto" setting for 5GHz channel width. I'd say it's perhaps about 1/3rd of AP's that run at 80MHz after this change. This is a highly dense AP environment (one AP per room) in a dense urban environment, so it doesn't surprise me that many of the AP's are not running at 80MHz. 

[ChrisR]

   There are lot of things that can go into why you are seeing issues. A site survey is going to be able to take measurements of your wireless setup to help determine if you have proper wireless coverage, too much channel overlap, along with some other information as well.

  What is the issues that you are experiencing on the wireless? Is it primarily 2.4Ghz? 5Ghz? Either band?  What is some of the background on the experiences that have been seen and the troubleshooting that has been done to this point?

Thanks,

Chris

[kYutobi]

I would say you have to check your surroundings. What kind of shop is it? Does this location have any other electronics with radio waves? May there be interference? What wireless card do your machines use? What's the structure of the building? Even something as simple as a microwave could be causing interference. Meraki also provides tools within the Wireless tab called

"RF spectrum"  click on your AP and check how everything is running. 

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Monitoring_and_Reporting/RF_Spectrum_Page_Overview

[BHC_RESORTS]

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@palmtree wrote:

We recently upgraded our shop and added a couple of Meraki APs. Wireless performance has been pretty bad. Support keeps pushing us to perform a site survey; is this actually required?

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Site surveys are a good idea. That being said, this is a pretty opened question with a TON of different directions to go. What exactly is poor about the performance? Slow speeds (LAN, WAN, or both?), disconnection, etc.?

1. AP Placement?
2. Building design?
3. MR model?
4. Network topology with make/models of switches/router?
5. RF setup? (channel width, power, channel settings, DFS, etc.)
6. SSID setup? (L3 roaming, Meraki DHCP, etc.)

Knowing some of this info may point us in the right direction for troubleshooting. Effective WiFi design and setup is incredibly complex - especially when multiple APs are setup.