After 2800 to 9120 swap, issues occuring

[michalobsitnik]

Hello all,

We have swapped 2800 for 9120 APs 1 for 1 in a office, which are connecting to AireOS 5520 8.10.183.0 WLC. THere was never issues reported within this site, but after this 1 for 1 swap, we are getting bombarded with INC of signal issues, wireless dropping etc. (classic wireless INCs). There was no config change done at WLC level, no changes were done within the laptops, only variable which was changed was this AP hardware.
DNAC is reporting us that all of the sudden, many users experience sticky behavior issues, we are getting data that overall experience is lower due to lower signal on these clients, but no idea what could be causing it.
Has anyone experienced a similar behavior? Any idea why hardware changes started causing so many issues all of the sudden?

[Rasika Nayanajith]

I would suggest go for the recommended release 8.10.196.0 & see if problem remains. I would check Tx power setting of those APs (compare if you had a snapshot before AP model changed)

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless/wireless-lan-controller-software/200046-tac-recommended-aireos.html 

HTH
Rasika
**** Pls rate all useful references ***

[eglinsky2012]

To add to the TX power recommendation, if you utilize AP groups and RF profiles, make sure that the 9120s are in the same AP group that the 2800s were in if there was an RF profile applied to the AP group the 2800s were in. 

[marce1000]

  - As another posted mentioned , for these generation of APs  , you should use 8.10.196.0 and or the latest recommended release for a particular aireos based controller model. Also have a checkup of the 5520 controller's configuration using : 
              WirelessAnalyzer input (procedure) for AireOs controllers
 and feed the output from that into Wireless Config Analyzer

 M.

[michalobsitnik]

@eglinsky2012 @Rasika Nayanajith yeah I checked the AP power settings and they are the same. As Eglinsky mentioned, we have a AP groups and RF profiles created so these new APs just got tagged under the same ones. 

[Rich R]

Remember you have upgraded from 802.11ac (wave 2) APs to 802.11ax (WiFi 6) APs.
So your clients need to be WiFi 6 compatible.
For example older Intel WiFi drivers were riddled with serious bugs such that some could not even connect and others didn't work very well.  Make sure your client OS and drivers are all fully up to date.

For Intel: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19351/intel-wireless-wi-fi-drivers-for-windows-10-and-windows-11.html

What are the clients reporting the issues?

As the others have said your first step should be to update to the latest TAC recommended code version as per the link below - currently 8.10.196.0.

If you still see the issues then run debug on client MAC address and use the Debug Analyzer (link below).