High WiFi latency on Meraki AP's

[Messy]

Hello!

Just started my very first Network admin job and the first thing I'm diving into is complaints about WiFi performance.

We have a bunch of Cisco Meraki MR33's serving a wide office area. The main complaints come from an area where users are packed in quite tightly. Roughly 50ish users right underneath two AP's.

Reports of problems are sporadic but common. We had a large issue last week where both those AP's were reporting 2 to 3 thousand ms ping average latency (reported in the Cisco Meraki online management portal).



My question is less about what the problem was and more about how do I go about investigating these kinds of issues? When the portal is showing such a high average ping, where do I go for more info? How do I drill down onto what's causing it? 
How do I tell if its bandwidth saturation or the APs being slow or etc?

Thanks in advance!

[Kasun Bandara]

the key point is destination of your latency check. if you check towards internet destination, this can be a internet issue, bandwidth issues, etc. if its local server, can be issue in network connectivity to that server. if its for another wireless PC in same network, can be issue in AP throughput. best thing is measure all of them to get understanding about location of issue. then check meraki AP performance to understand how radio interference status and load of radios. check different channels (2.4and 5Ghz). also as you said number of users matters here. how users distributed between 2 APs. that can check form meraki dashboard clients list. 

these are few checkings. there is more. start from one point and try to isolate the issue.

[Messy]

so there were about 30 or 40 users, heavily one sided with about 20-30 on one AP. However, I thought theses AP's could handle a couple of hundred connected devices each?

[Rich R]

> I thought theses AP's could handle a couple of hundred connected devices each?
Ah, marketing and data sheets lol.  Those numbers are a theoretical absolute maximum number of connected clients doing nothing at all.  Real clients DO stuff and how the network and AP performs depends on what they're doing.  You need to calculate AP requirements from that and tune the RF appropriately - for example disabling lower date rates.  WiFi 6 also has some enhancements that can improve performance in that type of deployment.  Also try to make sure clients are using 5GHz band not 2.4GHz.  And of course site survey based on requirements.

See https://documentation.meraki.com/Architectures_and_Best_Practices/Cisco_Meraki_Best_Practice_Design/Best_Practice_Design_-_MR_Wireless/High_Density_Wi-Fi_Deployments for some details on what you should be looking at for a start.  Their worked example is based on a maximum of 25 clients per AP.

[Kasun Bandara]

practically, 1 AP can handle 20-25 users without any issues. 

[leoloren]

Check this document out ---> https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Cross-Platform_Content/Meraki_Health_Overview#Wireless_Overview

It will show you how to navigate through the Meraki health dashboard and tips on how to drill down the issue with just a few clicks

[Messy]

thanks guys!