Why do I see beacon frames from AP with different channels ?

[carl_townshend]

Hi All

I have been doing some packet captures on my Meraki APs,

I have 2 questions

1- Why do I see beacons on the 2.4Ghz range with channels other than 1,6,11, I see beacons on channel 10 etc, why is this?

2 - Does the AP send the same amount of beacons on each radio? i.e 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz

[Rafael E]

1- Why do I see beacons on the 2.4Ghz range with channels other than 1,6,11, I see beacons on channel 10 etc, why is this?

what you are seeing is a neighbor AP using an overlapping channel. Let's say you capture on channel 11, your adapter can still decode packet from channels 9,10,12,13 as they use the same frequency as 11. 

I recommend for you to track that rogue AP and find out why it is using that channel ( bad deployment ) 

2 - Does the AP send the same amount of beacons on each radio? i.e 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz

that will depend of the number of SSID configure in each radio + the beacon interval you have configured, if both configurations are the same I would expect a similar number of beacons. 

[carl_townshend]

Hi there

The beacons I am seeing are broadcasts from the AP itself and not other AP's, hence I need to know why the AP is sending beacons on funny channels, could this be a bug maybe?

Cheers

See attached photo