topic Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss" in Wireless

Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

OilG — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 16:50:20 GMT

For several months now, our customer has reported poor Wi-Fi network performance from their Meraki Wi-Fi network.

One of our immediate observations is that Wi-Fi clients on the network - using Meraki MR46 APs running firmware MR 29.4.1 - are frequently being disconnected from the Wi-Fi network (several SSIDs) through 802.11 Disassociation; and in each case this is being caused by one several different factors, the most significant of which is reported in the Event Log for Access Points with the Details: “excess frame loss”.

What percentage or rate of 802.11 frame loss is sufficient to cause the Meraki access point to disassociate a client?
How can we adjust that percentage threshold, or frame loss rate threshold, or the timespan over which that percentage/rate is assessed - so that clients will then not be disassociated as often as they are currently being?
How can I see the actual percentages of frame loss / frame error rates:

For each client?
For each AP?
For the customer's network as a whole?

Many thanks,

Ian

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

Philip D'Ath — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 19:11:47 GMT

What sort of signal strength are the clients getting? You may just need to add more access points.

Are you trying to use 5Ghz only (have disabled 2.4Ghz if possible)? 2.4Ghz experiences so much interference these days.

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

OilG — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 10:26:48 GMT

Hi Philip,

Thank you for your response.

For background, I have 20 years' experience as a leading Wi-Fi network consultant and engineer, so please feel free to ask questions as deeply as you like 🙂

i). The Clients were Associated (connected) to the 5GHz AP radios.

ii). The clients are getting signal strengths of around -65dBm to -70dBm or better, which is more than adequate for a reliable 802.11 Association.

iii). Poor signal strength (dBm) or poor Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)(dB) at the Client would tend to:

Increase frame loss at the Client (causing Downlink frame loss: AP-to-client frames) until the Adaptive Rate Shifting (ARS) algorithm at the AP reduced the AP's transmit bit rate (Modulation and Coding Scheme - MCS).

So a key question in this respect is:

Do the Meraki logged messages "excess frame loss" refer to:

a. Frame loss at the Client - recognised by missing Uplink (Client-to-AP) ACK frames at the AP? .. leading to Downlink frame re-transmissions by the AP, and a counter or rate for those re-transmissions that would be recorded by the AP? or

b. Frame loss at the AP - recognised by CRC errors in Uplink frames received from the Client at the AP?

iv). The SNR reported at the Meraki APs is mostly in the region of 39 to 41 dB - which is again more than adequate for a reliable 802.11 Association.

Poor SNR or poor signal strength at the APs (Uplink SNR (dB) or Uplink signal strength (dBm)) would

would tend to:

Increase frame loss at the AP (client-to-AP, that is Uplink frame loss) until the Adaptive Rate Shifting (ARS) algorithm at the Client reduced the Client's transmit bit rate (Modulation and Coding Scheme - MCS).

-oOo-

Can someone answer my original questions please?

What percentage or rate of 802.11 frame loss is sufficient to cause the Meraki access point to disassociate a client?
How can we adjust that percentage threshold, or frame loss rate threshold, or the timespan over which that percentage/rate is assessed - so that clients will then not be disassociated as often as they are currently being?
How can I see the actual percentages of frame loss / frame error rates:

For each client?
For each AP?
For the customer's network as a whole?

My fourth (new) questions is:

4. Do the Meraki logged messages "excess frame loss" refer to:

b. Frame loss at the AP - recognised by CRC errors in Uplink frames received from the Client at the AP?

Many thanks,

Ian

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

mgonzalez15 — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 22:41:33 GMT

I have the same problem, with the same Meraki MR46 and the APs running the MR 29.4.1 firmware, I hope for some help or guidance.

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

joelnegron — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 02:14:30 GMT

Upgraded to 29.4.1 mid-December and experiencing the issue described in a high-density (50 AP) MR56 network; however, In addition to the forceful client disassociations (excess frame loss), clients seem to be aggressively roaming for no apparent reason. Quite frustrating.

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

BP12 — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 18:06:52 GMT

Also experiencing forced disassociation due to "excess frame loss".

Using 2 MR30Hs on firmware ver. 29.4.1 as well. Have been running these for about a year and have not had these kinds of problems until recently (and although the total number of clients in my building fluctuates some from week to week, it doesn't generally fluctuate by more than 10% up or down).

It's beginning to look (to me anyway) like this might be an issue with the latest release. I look forward to Cisco's response here.

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

kris-manning — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 09:26:05 GMT

I really glad to see somebody else is having the same problem. When we logged the exact same thing with meraki support we were told "well nobody else is having that problem". Not really much help.

We ended up going back to an older version. We still see excess frame loss errors but the aggressive roaming has stopped. Funny thing is that we use 29.4.1 in some other sites and dont see the roaming agressiveness.

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

hans.wikberg — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 12:56:11 GMT

Similar issue, MR44 29.4.1.
Reports are coming in now after the holidays.
Lot of "802.11 disasssociation, excessive frame loss"

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

Henrik_ — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 13:08:42 GMT

Same issues for us after upgrade to 29.4.1. 5GHz only, eight MR46s, clients disconnect with problems to reconnect. Lots of "802.11 disassociation excess frame loss" in the event log. Both iOS and Windows 10 clients.

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

BP12 — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 16:41:41 GMT

As further evidence - the building is empty right now and I have some desktops and thermostats (devices that remain there 100% of the time) that have been dropping and re-associating all night long due to excess frame loss. Total # of clients on WiFi right now is <30.

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

richard.hindley — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 16:43:36 GMT

I am also seeing something similar after upgrading to 29.4.1. Anyone know if an upgrade to 29.5 is worth a shot?

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

joelnegron — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 16:43:52 GMT

The issue is definitely compounded at locations with high-density coverage.

@kris-manning What version did you roll back to? We were previously on 28.7.1 so there were several releases in between.

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

OilG — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 17:17:37 GMT

Hi everyone,

Thank you for joining in and sharing your experiences too. Hopefully Meraki will sort the software quickly.

Maybe Meraki will even answer my questions please - in my Original Post and Post #2 ?! 😉

For further information, ours is a 10x MR46 AP deployment running firmware MR 29.4.1, and is also high-density in nature: some 200x Wi-Fi users and a floor area of around 550 m sq.

Ian

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

andrew114 — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 15:28:49 GMT

fwiw - I tried this last night on a couple of MR42's and it didn't help

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

Henrik_ — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 15:34:58 GMT

Thanks for sharing. We have two SSIDs with iOS devices on one and Windows devices on the other. Getting excessive frame loss on both networks. Both networks are configured with 802.11w (enabled not required). Can anyone confirm if the setting of 802.11w to enabled affects the issue of frame loss?

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

davidblumberg — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 21:45:17 GMT

We are also seeing issues with this on MR44, MR46 in various deployments and running 29.4.1

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

TimJenkins — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 21:49:00 GMT

Same - we have issues, 9 x MR46's all running 29.4.1.

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

xdhatcherx — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 23:16:03 GMT

We just started getting reports of devices disconnecting at multiple sites. When I checked the logs I also found the `excess frame loss` error. We updated to MR 29.4.1 back in mid-late Nov (mr53 APs). I called Meraki support this morning and they wanted me to run a monitor mode packet capture and send it to them (which I am in the process of doing at the moment) but this does seem suspiciously like a bug with the new firmware.

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

davidblumberg — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 02:04:40 GMT

I checked some other sites running 28.6 and seeing excess frame loss for some clients that are disassociating. I did a little more digging and it seems to mostly affect 802.11ax and 802.11ac clients and havent seen it affecting 802.11n clients

Re: Wi-Fi Clients being Disassociated due to "excess frame loss"

Joseph Widowski — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 18:00:12 GMT

You may want to check if Client Balancing is enabled as well, looks like the algorithm has changed for that on FW 29.x from a passive event (only during association time) to an active event (during and post association):

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Other_Topics/Client_Balancing