iPads continually drop from wireless.

[William Foster]

I work for a large company. We have many iPads used for scheduling zoom room meetings and they are all on the same SSID at all locations. These iPads will go through a stretch of having a solid connection then all of the sudden many office will start having issues with the iPads dropping off and we have to go back into the setting of the iPads and reconnect them to the SSID for them to get back online. We are running 9800 Controllers and a mixture of 9136, 9120, 3802 & 2702 Access Points. No mixture of APs at a single location. I see this is a common issue with a wide range of fixes. I don't manage the iPads but I do the wireless. I know the iPads are managed by JAMF and they should all be on the same version of IOS everywhere. This only happens at certain offices from what I can tell and when they go down it appears they all go down in that office. Is this a wireless issue or a IOS issue? Has anyone experienced and found a actual fix to the problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you 

[eglinsky2012]

You said there are multiple sites and multiple controllers. Does each site have its own controller, or do the APs join controllers at a central site? What model 9800 and what software/AP service pack are they running? Is the SSID the iPads are on switched locally (Flex mode) or switched centrally (client traffic tunneled to the WLC via CAPWAP)?

Do other SSIDs, other WiFi devices, or wired devices work when the iPads don't? Any interesting logs from the time of the issue in the switches/routers? Does the issue happen at multiple sites simultaneously? Do the APs remain joined to the WLC when the issue occurs?

[William Foster]

Thank you for responding. We have a SSO pair 9800-40 in 1 DC that hosts about ½ of our APs and another SSO pair of 9800CL in a different DC that supplies a HA failover for the APs on the other controller. We are on 17.9.3 because that is the only version that supports all the access points we currently deploy. All APs are in Flex-Mode. All APs remain joined and no other SSID has issues. I only have issues with the iPads and we have many other clients on the wireless. This seems to happen with iPads at several sites but not all sites. When they drop off they all drop off at that location. No helpful logs that I can see.

[Mark Elsen]

                    >...We are on 17.9.3 because that is the only version that supports all the access points
  - Note that on recent releases support for older APs was introduced again , you may always verify with :
                  https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/compatibility/matrix/compatibility-matrix.html

 M.
              

[Mark Elsen]

 - Have a checkup of the 9800 WLC configuration in the particular office with the CLI command show tech wireless and feed the output to : Wireless Config Analyzer
                        Compare results for a 9800 in a 'working office' (...)  e.g.

   - Further engage in full client debugging according to https://logadvisor.cisco.com/logadvisor/wireless/9800/9800ClientConnectivity , these debugs can be analyzed with Wireless Debug Analyzer

  - Outputs from the commands mentioned in https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless/catalyst-9800-series-wireless-controllers/217738-monitor-catalyst-9800-kpis-key-performa.html#anc5 can also be useful

 - Are all 9800 controllers on the same software version ? Go for 17.9.5 in the problem office and check if that can help ,

 M.

[JPavonM]

@William Foster don't discard this maybe a RF issue due to DFS events, or connectivity issue due to somekind of DoS, if more devices from different OSes are impacted.

[Rich R]

You can also get detailed debug logs from the iPads.  You'll need an Apple Developer subscription and then download the WiFi debug profile from https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/profiles-and-logs/?name=wifi
Strangely I don't see iPadOS there so I would hope the IOS profile will work (?) otherwise you'll need to contact them to ask for one.
Install the profile (activates for 1 week) and then follow the pdf instructions to get full system logs and debugs after the disconnect has happened.
If it doesn't happen within the week you need to keep reinstalling the profile.

ps: I've used that to log and report a number of iPhone WiFi bugs.