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  • About dhatcher
dhatcher

dhatcher

Here to help

Member since Jun 14, 2018

‎04-29-2020
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Community Record

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Latest Contributions by dhatcher
  • Topics dhatcher has Participated In
  • Latest Contributions by dhatcher

Re: A Guest Community Challenge!

by dhatcher in Community Announcements
‎12-10-2019 02:45 PM
2 Kudos
‎12-10-2019 02:45 PM
2 Kudos
I'm with KRobert. I would like the ability to see real time hardware statistics in the dashboard without having to go through the API. It's handy to be able to see if a device(s) is getting near a certain threshold of hardware utilization at any given point in time. ... View more

Re: MX84 - Tracking some Event Log traffic

by dhatcher in Security / SD-WAN
‎07-17-2019 03:00 PM
‎07-17-2019 03:00 PM
Checked to see if anyone has a rogue DHCP server plugged in (usually in the form of a home wireless router at someone's desk)? ... View more

Re: Mobile devices always seem to have packet loss

by dhatcher in Wireless LAN
‎07-17-2019 02:50 PM
‎07-17-2019 02:50 PM
We had a lot of weird latency issues and packet loss internally, in addition to devices getting dropped and our network occasionally going offline for 20-30 seconds at a time. Ultimately, we swapped to a spare device and all our issues cleared up.   If it's just your iPads, have you inspected the environment around the iPads? Are these stationary devices (like Zoom Room controllers) or do they move around frequently? Are they in some kind of protective case that might be interferring with the wi-fi signal? Do they sit next to other non-wifi interferers like wireless keyboards, bluetooth headsets etc?   Those are some things I could think of off the top of my head that could contribute to poor wireless reception just to a specific device type. ... View more

Re: Mobile devices always seem to have packet loss

by dhatcher in Wireless LAN
‎07-16-2019 07:34 PM
‎07-16-2019 07:34 PM
In our case we actually found by replacing the security device with another (same model) the issue went away. Hardware? *shrug*  ... View more

Re: Happy New Year! What are your Network Resolutions?

by dhatcher in Community Announcements
‎01-08-2019 10:36 AM
2 Kudos
‎01-08-2019 10:36 AM
2 Kudos
 1. When we moved into our new building this past year the data/cabling vendor just mounted our Meraki APs willy nilly and some of them are in less than desirable spots (photos for reference). Some of them are mounted into our concrete ceilings. A project this year for me will be to go around and relocate those APs to areas where they achieve better signal propagation. It won't be easy because I have to deal with the concrete but, I'm confident I can do it 🙂   2. Become a CWNA   3. Dig in more on RF characteristics and math to make troubleshooting wireless networks easier (hopefully)         ... View more

Re: The results are in! Congratulations to the winners of the WiFi Challeng...

by dhatcher in Community Announcements
‎09-28-2018 05:14 PM
2 Kudos
‎09-28-2018 05:14 PM
2 Kudos
Thank you for hosting the challenge and to everyone who competed. I had a lot of fun thinking through the design and putting it together for an entry. Congratulations @PhilipDAth on the community vote! ... View more

Re: Community Challenge: Show off your WiFi chops for a chance to win!

by dhatcher in Community Announcements
‎09-21-2018 10:07 AM
12 Kudos
‎09-21-2018 10:07 AM
12 Kudos
For this deployment the key things I focused on were: High density environment Room sizes that can change 600 max participant limit Availability of metrics to conference staff as well as clients   I designed the venue using an even layout of 16 Meraki MR52 APs being fed from a Meraki MS120-24 switch being fed from a Meraki MX250 security device. These devices were chosen because of their compatibility with each other and because they serve the perceived capacity requirements of the venue.   Most Meraki APs can serve a theoretical max of 128 clients (per Meraki documentation here: https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/WiFi_Basics_and_Best_Practices/Approximating_Maximum_Clients_per_Access_Point) but, for design purposes  I prefer to keep the equipment specified for double the peak utilization to preserve performance and provide excess capacity in case of failures.  Working from the number of 600 participants and having done wireless administration for some time, you realize that most participants typically bring two devices with them (laptop, mobile). Some bring 3-4 (tablets, watches, etc)! So a more realistic capacity number would be 1200 devices. Since I wanted to keep the design a little simpler (too many more APs and we’d have to add an extra switch for power requirements). I went with 16 of the MR52 APs (and I chose MR52 because those are designed with high density in mind) and they can all be powered off one MS120-24 switch from Meraki. I should make a small mention about doubling the security gateway and switch for redundancy purposes but, felt that might be beyond the scope of this scenario.   The MX250 security device was chosen as the gateway/router/etc because it has a capability to handle up to 2000 clients and 4Gbps of bandwidth. This fits our capacity requirements without going overboard or under designing (MX100 only recommends 500 clients and the MX450 is overkill with 10,000 clients).   The MX250 also allows the use of traffic shaping which would be a critical component to cover the requirement of keeping up the performance of business-critical applications. I would create 2 separate WiFi SSIDs for the venue, one for onsite venue staff/management and one guest network for attendees and vendors. For the guest network, I would setup a click-through splash page just so the venue can have a way for users to agree to a TOS. On the guest network, I would setup traffic shaping so that there was a per-client limitation of 5Mbps and a Per-SSID limitation of 475Mbps. This would reserve at least 25Mbps for the venue staff/management SSID. Depending on the needs of the business critical applications, adjustments to those numbers could be made.   As for the configuration of the APs themselves, I would likely create an RF profile for the site and then set Band Selection to Per AP and I would turn off band steering. I know vendors  promote  band  steering but  my experience shows  that most of the time it  fails to meet expectations and sometimes actually inhibits devices from connecting. I would set minimum bitrate per SSID and set a fairly high minimum bitrate (18Mbps) to encourage devices to switch to their nearest APs quickly. I would also set client balancing to ON since this will be a high density environment and there is the possibility to overwhelm a particular AP with client connections without this feature enabled. Channel width would depend on the location for me but, I would likely set the channel widths to 20MHz for the 5GHz band so that RF could be reduced with a higher selection of available channels (DFS decisions would be made dependent on location proximity to an airport). I would also set radio power to automatic. As the rooms can change sizes and devices could be anywhere within the venue, radio signal strength needs to be automatically adjustable by the system to compensate for the room changes and device locations. There should also be discussions held with the venue management about disabling the 2.4GHz band if there are no devices that need it in an effort to reduce RF interference for the bluetooth devices that attendees are likely to have with them.   For the metrics in this scenario, I would say a combination of a the Location Analytics report and the Organization Wireless Summary Report would give all the performance and details of attendance and engagement that would be desired. These could be piped out to a web page through the Meraki API or the summary report could also be emailed on an event by event basis to whoever would need it.    ... View more

Re: Mobile devices always seem to have packet loss

by dhatcher in Wireless LAN
‎06-18-2018 10:37 PM
‎06-18-2018 10:37 PM
No the particular iPad in question is a controller for our Zoom room and it’s been specifically set not to ever sleep or lock (it stays plugged into power all day). I could see if that were the case with a couple devices or if they were moving between APs at the time but, I can pick any mobile device at any time and ping it from the MX100 and get packet loss between the device and the MX100. This also happens in our San Diego office with an MX-64 and MR42 APs.  ... View more

Re: Mobile devices always seem to have packet loss

by dhatcher in Wireless LAN
‎06-18-2018 08:54 PM
‎06-18-2018 08:54 PM
All mobile devices (laptops seem to be behaved as far as I can tell). Android, ios. All seem to include some amount of packet loss.  ... View more

Mobile devices always seem to have packet loss

by dhatcher in Wireless LAN
‎06-18-2018 03:57 PM
‎06-18-2018 03:57 PM
Hey Everyone,   I was troubleshooting an iPad in our environment that seemed to be randomly disconnecting. Long story short, I got curious and started pinging devices from the Meraki dashboard (Network Wide > Clients > pick a client > click the Play button for the ping tool in the lower right).   Every single mobile device I checked and I checked 10 or so at my site and our San Diego site all seemed to experience some kind of packet loss. Usually between 9-30% (sometimes more).   Just curious if this is a known bug, has anyone else run into this in their environment? Seems really out of the ordinary.  ... View more

Re: Devices not switching APs quickly

by dhatcher in Wireless LAN
‎06-14-2018 02:27 PM
‎06-14-2018 02:27 PM
Yeh I have tweaked the driver settings on the windows clients. Checked our minimum bitrate and it's set to 12Mbps. That seems okay? ... View more

Devices not switching APs quickly

by dhatcher in Wireless LAN
‎06-14-2018 01:11 PM
‎06-14-2018 01:11 PM
We have a mixed environment of windows and apple laptops as well as ios and android mobile devices. I've done a lot of tweaking to our system since joining the company but, I feel like devices are still staying attached to APs and not changing quickly enough to new APs when they roam or not changing at all.   We use MR42 APs and we have 9 in the building right now. The building is a 3 story, concrete nightmare. Mostly concrete walls with glass conference room walls. It's your typical rectangular shaped but, internally there are just a lot of obstructions. 3 APs per floor, evenly spread out, linearly (or as near to linear as possible... not my choice but it was handed to me like that and I just have to deal with that layout for now).   Things I've done to improve the wlan: Change 5GHz to 40Mhz wide instead of 80Mhz (we don't have a super fast ISP connection and I don't really find it necessary to be on 80MHz wide channels). Set transmit power of 2.4GHz range to 14dBm and 5GHz range to 20dBm Manually set 2.4GHz channels to 1,6,11 and map them out so they have as little overlap as possible Manually set 5GHz channels to 36,44,149,157 and also tried to have as little overlap as possible We're near the SJC airport so, I've opted to not use DFS channels I tried enabling 802.11r (yes, we're all patched to avoid the KRACK) but, it seemed to make things especially bad for ios devices so I turned it off   After those changes, things seem to be quite a bit better but, I'm always looking to make improvements even if they're just minor. Is there anything anyone here could recommend for improvements or things to look at? I can also post other info (graphs etc) if it's felt that would be helpful. Thank you all for your help!   ... View more
Kudos from
User Count
techmoc
techmoc
1
MeredithW
Community Manager MeredithW
1
LauraK
Meraki Employee LauraK
1
CarolineS
Community Manager CarolineS
3
RJordan-CCS
RJordan-CCS
2
View All
Kudos given to
User Count
KRobert
KRobert
1
CarolineS
Community Manager CarolineS
1
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My Top Kudoed Posts
Subject Kudos Views

Re: Community Challenge: Show off your WiFi chops for a chance to win!

Community Announcements
12 9712

Re: A Guest Community Challenge!

Community Announcements
2 8297

Re: Happy New Year! What are your Network Resolutions?

Community Announcements
2 10603

Re: The results are in! Congratulations to the winners of the WiFi Challeng...

Community Announcements
2 6619
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