MR42/MR52 bad performance

[Marc_V]

Hello,

We have replaced our MR32 for a mix of MR42/MR52 and since this change, we can see that performance (bandwidth) slowly getting lower and lower and almost tend to less than 1 Mbps. Only a reboot of the device permit to have good performance back for some time.

We are observing this behavior in environment where there is multiple other SSIDs broadcasted by other third parties in the buildings next to us.

We are in 5GHz only, 40 Mhz width channel. The 5 Ghz Channels used are not overloaded in utilization by other third parties.

If i put a MR32 at the same place, same channels, i don't have the issue.

It's like MR42/MR52 have an issue when the environment is used a lot even if it is not on the channels we are using. And, a reboot solve the issue for some hours (and we keep the same channels, so it's not a question of channels overloaded).

We have open ticket to support but upgrading to last firmware does not help.

Thanks in advance.

[zzzthump]

Ours has just fallen over again on V28.1

We got about 3 weeks out of them again. Useless

[Emre666]

Hi @zzzthump,

Has the beta firmware improved anything? I just noticed there is a 28.4 beta release and I am thinking of trying that.

We have a total of 22 MR42s and have been dealing with the exact issue for almost a year now. Super slow network and a lot of 802.11 disassociations with "unknown error", where clients are disconnected from the network.

Emre

[Nolan H.]

You could always downgrade to 26.8.1

[zzzthump]

Hi

We have tried that version. Still had issues.

[Nolan H.]

If that is the case, that sort of pokes a hole in the 'this issue was introduced with the 27.x train' comment

[zzzthump]

Yes exactly, my thoughts as well. We tried that in Feb. We have had our case open since last year.

Pretty poor to release a product with such a major bug. Ive had more luck out of a dlink AP.

[heyb]

Are you running Meraki Switches?

I am running 28.3 firmware if tried every firmware release with a hope it will include the final fix.

[CMR]

Just to reassure you on the reboot loop, we have over 50 MR42s running release 28.4 and we don't have the reboot issue.

[Emre666]

We have four networks and with the exception of one, all have Meraki switches. But the issue is present in all of our networks.

Latest advice from Meraki support is to disable client balancing in one of our networks. Despite my willingness to upgrade the firmware to v28.x, they did not recommend it (?). The issue has now been escalated to their development team.

One last thing; most of our devices are Mac laptops. I haven't been able to verify the issue with Windows machines. I wonder this has to do with the NIC firmware vs Meraki AP.

[MGoodall]

Almost 6 months later and we are still waiting, despite weeks of chasing.

We are currently running the latest firmware but still having to reboot regularly to get decent performance.

Last update from Meraki..

Thank you for contacting Cisco Meraki Technical Support. Thank you for your email. I would like to inform you that our Dev Engineers are working on this issue. I will reach out to you once I have any updates. Thank you for your patience

Sigh.. roll on 2022!

[Glo1]

I am having the exact same problem with a client of mine running MR52s. We are waiting on the next release for later this month. They say they hope to have a fix for this. 28.5 seems to be running better these days. We stayed on 27.7.1 for a while just to be sure, but recently upgraded more sites to 28.5. Fingers crossed.

[DainBrammage]

Ok I have read through all the posts. Quick question What type of power are you hitting the APs with? If they are getting 802.3af power they will work but become way more persnickety and your dedicated scanning radio goes away and they become quite sticky from a channel standpoint. Also, the MR 32 is only capable of running the 26 family of FW.

https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Firmware_Upgrades/Product_Firmware_Version_Restrictions

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

Models with a dedicated scanning radio, such as the MR18/32/34/42/52/53/84, don't generate channel_scan events. They rely on the scanning radio to get the neighbor and channel utilization report on an ongoing basis.

In comparison, models without the dedicated scanning radio, such as the MR12/16/20/24/70, scan the whole spectrum every 2 hours when there are no clients associated. When low power mode is enabled the scanning radio function becomes disabled. Thus, not only are there no channel_scan events but AutoRF channel assignment can be negatively impacted.

[zzzthump]

Hi

We have had a very similar issue. Running approximately 60 MR52s across the enterprise. Tuning has been done manually for channels and power as found we could get a much better result than allowing the APs to manually complete this. Everything worked perfectly. my.meraki gave high download speeds consistently.

However after a few weeks to a month the usual report is poor performance and running a my.meraki speedtest which only tests bandwidth between the device and the AP shows a maximum speed of 20Mbs. We have tried to change the channels in use, power settings, channel width all to no avail. In some cases I have seen 0-1Mbs on the my.meraki test.

We have tried all the different Meraki firmware available and custom firmware, still to no avail. A ticket has been open with Meraki for months and still its in their "research and development section" with no solid answer forth coming.

I feel Meraki have really dropped the ball on this and they have had countless options to resolve it. I used to really believe in Meraki hardware, and while all devices have issues, the real key to customer service is how you deal with the problem. There is no way a retail shop would have got away with this fiasco.

We feel the Meraki devices have a hardware issue as I never saw these issues on MR33s or lower spec devices in the past. The symptom is a memory leak.

We also have a few MR56s we have installed and touch wood after weeks and weeks we have no issues at all so far.

These are affecting not only one office but multiple offices around as well, so it is not an environmental issue either as all offices are different types, some very isolated to the outside world so no chance of interference.

I have spent hours and hours with Meraki on this one and sent countless packet capture logs we had to acquire an Apple MAC so we could obtain the details they required.

However as of today I have just had to reboot 6 APs to resolve issues for clients and suspect I will need to do more.

I have even raised to Meraki they need to own this issue and arrange a scheduled staggered reboot to provide a stop gap for us. However that was met with a solid no. Also there is no uptime in the dashboard which would help predict the issue and be proactive. Meraki have uptime on their dashboard but customers dont...go figure...

We have also been told we are the only ones experiencing this issue, which I know is not the case, however this is the most recent post I have seen concerning these devices.

All I can suggest is push Meraki hard. There are issues as we are experiencing them as well.

Cheers

Michael

[heyb]

We are also having the same problem. Smaller scale we have 4 MR42s

I had 2 of the MR42s replaced via RMA with Meraki.

I got about 4 weeks out of the new MR42s before the problem comes back.

It is not as severe as we get about 20-40Mbps on the my.meraki.com speedtest

But with my MR33s I'm getting 285-385Mbps up and down.

I have also been working on this issue for many hours with Meraki.

I bought Meraki to avoid issues like this.

There is no way to even schedule a reboot as far as I know.

At this point I would reboot them once per week on the weekend.

I'm a bit concerned in pushing the new 28.4 beta as I've read a post that it can cause some kinda of reboot loop.

[Emre666]

I've tried reboot a few times to no avail. Does reboot temporarily fix the issue?