What are people's experiences with Meraki APs failing?

[nikaso]

We've just had our 4th Meraki AP fail and had to be RMA'd since their installation in August last year. This is out of a total of 36 APs so it seems quite a high number to me?

 

Has anyone had similar experiences?

[nikaso]

Guess it might just be me then!

[tomearnshaw]

99 APs here with no issues as of yet, however they have only been in less than two weeks!

[computer_expert]

I have a number of meraki APs that have been fine for the last few years.

[nikaso]

I'm hoping we just had a bad batch rather than anything more serious, fingers crossed!

[kearton]

What model, @nikaso? MR11, MR12, MR16, MR18, MR24, MR26, MR34, MR62, MR66 ???

In what way are they failing? Failing to power? Failing to boot? etc?

[nikaso]

What model, @nikaso? MR11, MR12, MR16, MR18, MR24, MR26, MR34, MR62, MR66 ???

In what way are they failing? Failing to power? Failing to boot? etc?

 

The first 3 were MR16s, last one was an MR24, The MR16s that have failed just display a red power light and won't factory reset, the MR24 gives an unstable connection, on ping tests through the dashboard I see pings in excess of 20000 ms , factory reset didn't cure it.

[pete]

Anything odd in the logs of the (presumably) POE switch powering them?

[nikaso]

Anything odd in the logs of the (presumably) POE switch powering them?

 

We use POE injectors, because we have quite a spread out site it was going to be quite expensive to put a POE switch in at each location, of course that means no logs to query unfortunately!

[kearton]

From memory the MR16s only have Orange and Green Radio Power lights, not Red? (We had MR16s when we originally trialled the kit, but when we bought we got the new MR18s which have a veritable rainbow of lights).

A solid Orange light on MR16 means it is booting or looking for a path to the Internet. Are you using static IP or DHCP? If DHCP then look to see if there is an old lease for the problem AP and delete it. I had one problem one which came right after I did this. Hope this helps.

[glennda]

In my experience of the kit i've never seen this issues (i support nearly 100aps across about 15 clients). The only device I have had be sent back is a Z1 security appliance.

 

What POE injectors are you using?

[nikaso]

We are using Phihong POE injectors, they were £20 each versus the £70-80 for official Meraki injectors at the time.

[nikaso]

From memory the MR16s only have Orange and Green Radio Power lights, not Red? (We had MR16s when we originally trialled the kit, but when we bought we got the new MR18s which have a veritable rainbow of lights).

A solid Orange light on MR16 means it is booting or looking for a path to the Internet. Are you using static IP or DHCP? If DHCP then look to see if there is an old lease for the problem AP and delete it. I had one problem one which came right after I did this. Hope this helps.

 

I think I did try this but have sent them back and received replacements now anyway so hopefully it'll be ok!

[glennda]

We are using Phihong POE injectors, they were £20 each versus the £70-80 for official Meraki injectors at the time.

 

Yes I am wondering if it could be an issue with these - what have Meraki said about the issue?

[nikaso]

Yes I am wondering if it could be an issue with these - what have Meraki said about the issue?

 

They got me to try the usual, factory resets etc but none of it worked so they issued an RMA for both.

[glennda]

They got me to try the usual, factory resets etc but none of it worked so they issued an RMA for both.

 

But have you raised it that you have now had multiple failures? IMHO I would be looking at something which is exactly the same between all the failures - which points towards POE injectors. But it could just be a freak failure of devices.

[nikaso]

I did mention we didn't use Meraki POEs but they didn't seem interested

[glennda]

I did mention we didn't use Meraki POEs but they didn't seem interested

 

at the end of the day anything that provides POE should be fine - It was just more wondering if it was something else rather than the AP's themselves causing an issue (maybe overloading/surge etc)

 

It could just well be that you have been unluck.

[nikaso]

I think when I get chance I will start changing them for original Meraki items, if these are supplying overvoltage over a long period they might causing damage. I think a suck it and see approach for now. Thanks for the advice though.

[Strawdog]

Bit of a late response but we had our entire wireless network* replaced with Meraki MR16 and MR24s back in February (connected to Cisco Catalyst 2960S PoE switches) - we had so many APs fail that Meraki ended up upgrading all the APs to MR18/MR26 units at no cost. It seems they have had issues with bad batches of the MR16s.

 

*The old system was Cisco 1131 APs on Cisco 4404 WLAN controllers with ACS and WCS in the backend

[DPrince]

We also installed a batch of MR16s over the past 12 months and had about a 10% failure rate. Got the same response as OP - Meraki just RMA'd them and couldn't give an explanation. Response from our Meraki account manager was pretty good, and the return time wasn't bad. We're just about to buy a batch of the MR16 replacements.

[sjoerdslabbers]

we bought various AP's MR26 and MR34, all are failing with high latency. Even if they are only connected with 2 or 3 users. We tried everything, our case is now over 4 months old and it is still not fixed. Did the RMA resolved the issue? Does anybody have any idea what's going on?

[glennda]

we bought various AP's MR26 and MR34, all are failing with high latency. Even if they are only connected with 2 or 3 users. We tried everything, our case is now over 4 months old and it is still not fixed. Did the RMA resolved the issue? Does anybody have any idea what's going on?

 

Does the AP itself have high latency if you run a ping from it? That sounds like it could be a network issue rather than the AP's but without knowing more its hard to tell.

 

Do you have legacy mode enabled.

[Strawdog]

We're a BSF Managed Service school so our ICT infrastructure is managed by a third party (but not for much longer \o/) who are very secretive and keep us at arms length for most trouble shooting however we're still having problems with our new Meraki APs.

 

The issues are under investigation by Meraki, the installer (Logicalis) and our managed service provider (Lend Lease ICT) and have also been going on for a number of months. We mostly have issues with OS:X 10.8.* MacBook clients roaming between APs - we've been suffering from very high latency, random disconnects, connection but no internet pass through and other general network instability; restarting the affected AP cures the issue in most circumstances but after 5-10 minutes it also often resolves itself (not great at the start of a lesson for teachers). This can happen even with only one client attached and tends to be more common in areas where there are external wireless inteference sources (nearby houses domestic wifi routers, etc.) which makes me think it's likely a problem with either channel assignment or band steering as N clients seem more heavily affected, unfortunately without access to the dashboard (thanks to the managed service) I can't see how any of it has been setup or view any of the logs

 

This might help with troubleshooting for some of you - https://meraki.cisco.com/blog/2011/07/12-ways-to-optimize-your-event-wi-fi-deployment/

 

Hope this helps some of you and please update the thread if you get anymore information from Meraki as it looks like there's a few of us suffering issues.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Strawdog

[Gaz]

As someone who is considering Meraki for our new wireless install has anyone with an MR18 had one fail? I've got one of the free ones from the webinar (MR18) and its been fine.