My company had a vendor install "high-density" WiFi for our office which consists of (7) Ubiquiti E7s APs (by request), all pendant-mounted and configured approporately for our crowded RF environment.

We broadcast a primary SSID with both 5GHz and 6Ghz with the transmit power fine-tuned per AP. There are no issues with RSSI throughout the office, but everytime the office is at full capacity ~250 end-users - the performance completely takes a shit.

We get decent speed test results nearby the APs when the office is not occupied (400-800mbps), but when the office is occupied we have some spots that get 100mbps. The upload speed takes the biggest hit as we have seen over the past few weeks.

I have some users that are roaming to APs that are far away for no reason that I can find? I have also see that some users are roaming

I've been advised not to utilize minimum RSSI configs as this deliberately kicks endpoints off the AP and causes intermittent connection. Our end-users are running a lot of continous Claude Code instances and Zoom calls and we cannot have the connections drop. It should be smooth roaming. We have 802.11r - fast roaming enabled. We also disabled handoff suggestions for the same reason. We trialed handoff suggestions and those were the days we had the worst complains.

What do I need to do to fix this? Leadership is even considering switching to Meraki but I don't think that's the problem here. Do we need more APs? On average we have about 40 clients per AP for 7 APs. The space is quite large and mostly open area.

So, large organization, thousands of users and several departments, Im constantly discovering that users are bringing routers to the work because they dont seem to think the current wifi policy access fits their daily routine, or they simply dont know how to request access to something, Im out sourced here so I dont have all the details.

How do you guys deal with the end users in terms of what is allowed and what is not?

Now we need to talk with the c-suite people about this situation. My thinking is that bringing an outside wireless equipment should be prohibited, I know theres avoidance mechanism for this kind of situation but having the ap changing channels in the middle of the day is also disruptive, spamming deauthentication frames also is going piss off someone.

Edit: to clarify something, those rogues are not connected to the infrastructure, they are simply there using a broadband connection that god knows why this customer thought it was a good idea to have solely for this little router, too close to their corporate aps and sometimes overlapping channels.

In 1994 or 1995, we were looking at a some wireless bridge product to run a link a couple of hundred meters over a parking lot, to another building. It was supposed to be 10 megabits, and I think it was $5000 at the time, presumably for a pair, which we considered surprisingly affordable and practical. No idea on the frequency band.

We didn't go through with the project at the time, but I'm interested in validating my memory, especially where the price/performance of this product offering comes in. I'm almost positive it was a niche vendor, nobody big like Wellfleet or 3Com. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Went to order some Cambium Wireless Enterprise APs and noticed the press release on their website. Since this caught me off guard, I figured there are other who are also unaware.

CnMaestro Cloud is being shutdown October 1st, 2026. Their recommended path forward is to move to the on-prem cnMaestro, but its unclear if/how long they will be supporting this product. Ultimately, the solution is to migrate to a new vendor.

We have some Aruba HP IAP-315 APs that we’re looking to replace. I was thinking of going with Ubiquity so we can use the cloud controller.

We have 50 clients max. It’s a 1000m2 2 story building with lots of walls and obstacles.

Since we have so few clients, I don’t think WiFi 7 is necessary, but I also don’t want to invest in something that’s going to reach end of support in a year or 2.

What would be a good ubiquity alternative to the Aruba IAP-315?

EDIT: Probably should’ve mentioned in the original post that the budget is $1400 for 3-4 APs and a controller. The wireless network is NOT crucial for business operations and is rarely used for accessing company resources. AFAIK it’s mostly used for staff to access Internet on their personal phones.

Hi all, my company is moving to a larger office (multiple floors) and we now have the opportunity to choose a new vendor for Wireless and Switching. We are currently using Ubiquiti, but now we’re looking at something enterprise-grade to keep up with our company’s growth (future-proof).

We’re looking at all vendors, including Cisco Meraki, juniper mist, Aruba central, extreme, and fortinet. With all the hype around AIOps and marketing fluff that comes from each vendor, I want to know all of your experience with these vendors. I have a vague understanding of the capabilities of some of these platforms, but do any of you have specific success stories, pros and cons, etc that you can share ? Any specific problem that a vendor’s product/platform was able to help you resolve?

Hello All,

Just a random question that I've been mulling over for a while but never got around to asking.

We manage the dorm network at the school where I work and we're always getting "the WiFi sucks" type complaints... ethernet is usually pretty good/consistent (except on really busy days)... we have a pretty good coverage of Aruba APs in that building... but we also have ethernet jacks in all the rooms and don't really lock them down so students are allowed to bring in their own wireless routers.

I think this is where the issue lies: because students can bring their own wireless routers (and MANY do) I think it's just causing too much interference in that building for the Aruba APs to operate effectively... when all the power went out a while back with the exception of the network closet (and therefor all APs due to POE) WiFi seemed to be performing pretty good/optimal.

Am I correct in assuming this or is there something more I can do?

Cheers.

MSP here. Is anybody getting absolutely absurd lead times for Meraki right now? MR36 (which is end-of-sale) at the end of the year, is 6 months lead time. Similar for 9171i and 9172i. And it changes wildly from day to day. We'll quote a model, and by the time 3 days goes by when we place the order, the lead time will have changed by months.

I know there's a lot of dislike for Meraki on this sub, but we have a great history with the solution since 2019, and it's very painful to think of moving to something different. We have hundreds of customers and thousands of devices on Meraki. Having said that, we can't keep telling customers that they can't have their wifi for 6 months. We're using Ubiquiti temporarily while waiting for the permanent device, but that creates extra work and is not sustainable.

We don't want Ubiquiti, it's just not an enterprise capable product. We had a proof of concept with Juniper Mist back in like 2020 but we were too busy to really make use of it to learn if Mist was workable or not. We hear that Aruba is well liked in huge deployments, but is it easy to use for many smaller multi-tenant environments? The solution has to be cloud-based controller, no local controller.

Overall what are people's thoughts on the best cloud-based alternative to Meraki, taking into account things like procurement, licensing, support, reliability, ease of use, and troubleshooting?

I know this gets asked every so often, but the market is always changing... Have not really needed anything up to know as I can never convince customers to pay for it. :) But one did, so I have budget!

So I need a nice, and easy walk around site survey tool with a pretty heat map output. Ideally something on a iPad or Android tablet I can send out with a junior tech, but PC based can work. I also do not get these jobs often enough to pay large ongoing license fees so a one time purchase with minimal maintenance cost is a plus.

What is the current favorite?

I'm looking for some wisdom because this issue is driving me crazy.

We have an Aruba Central deployment and a particular SSID used by staff phones.

User enters an elevator, loses WiFi signal for a short period, Android marks the SSID as "No Internet", then when the user leaves the elevator and coverage is available again the phone may stay disconnected for a very long time.

The strange part is that if you open Settings > WiFi and look at the list of networks, the phone often reconnects immediately without touching anything. Sometimes it takes 1-2 seconds, but it reconnects. If you manually tap the SSID it always reconnects instantly.

It feels as if Android has decided the network is bad and refuses to use it again until something triggers a recheck. (It happens with iPhones too, but most of users are Android).

Has anyone seen this before? Aruba issue? Android "avoid bad WiFi" behaviour? Roaming issue?

After leaving an elevator, it can stay disconnected for several minutes while standing still in an area with good coverage, then reconnect almost immediately as soon as the WiFi settings screen is opened.

I really appreciate your help.

Hello!

Many times I have scenarios where i have 2 cabinets of equipment online but im waiting on fiber runs to connect the two areas (primarily this is for SCADA/ control devices, ignition etc.)

This may sound stupid, but some kind of temporary wireless bridge or solution to allow device commissioning while i wait for fiber runs to complete would be a huge win for the business. Is this something someone sells? Our company doesn’t really shy away at cost if it means go fast. The distance can vary but it’s almost always confined to a building. Again this is something i would tear down after fiber is in place from an LVC, so wouldn’t need to be reliable or perfect. Appreciate any insight!

Hello, I'm developing a network where the clients are cameras attached to some vehicles. The vehicles are in constant motion and need to be able to switch from AP to AP reliably without sticking to far away APs.

Originally I tested this out with just the cameras but I could not find a single wireless camera that supported roaming. They all tend to stick to an AP even though its closer to another one.

So I'm going to test some wireless bridges. Has anybody worked with anything like this before? A 360 omnidirectional bridge that isn't fixed on a ptp wireless connection and is capable of roaming throughout the network connecting to the AP with the best signal available. Thanks

Looking for recommendations for a wireless point to point bridge. Currently using ignitenet metrolinq 2.5 60-35. It's about 8 years old and I think one of the radios are going bad. I have spares but would rather replace with something new. This is for a business, and it is critical that I replace with something reliable. I'm familiar with ubiquiti, cambium, and mimosa, but looking for suggestions on what has worked for anyone else. The distance is a little over a mile. Thanks!

I don't usually touch wireless, but I got assigned to this ticket about my client having difficulty connecting to our secured network via 11be.

He's using iPhone17 and its latest iOS version. I told him to forget the SSID and try to reconnect to the network, but it didn't work.

One thing I haven't tried is that setting private Wi-Fi address as "fixed". I remember it solved issues a couple of months ago when I was troubleshooting on some devices.

Some troubleshooting articles say I should turn off MLO temporarily but that's not an option. We'll see how it goes and report back to you all.

I have a question regarding implementing a solution to a new problem I have. I've designed and will soon be launching a new product called the DigiBall, which is the worlds first smart cue ball for billiards (see digicue dot net). The ball advertises BLE packets with ball information around 10 times per second. User applications just observe manufacturer data contained in the packet, they don't create a one-to-one connection unless they are rarely reconfiguring the ball parameters.

One unique application of this is adding a live overlay of the ball graphic and cue tip contact point of a shot on top of a streaming match video. This is easily done with OBS, and pointing the source of the overlays to images generated by scanner software I wrote. But many times the media control booth is far away from the table (out of BLE range). I want to create a WiFi bridge to throw the BLE packets onto a local network.

My solution was to use multicast. The scanner software can open a multicast channel as an alternative. Since I am only sending at a max of 36 bytes 10 times per second, and at most 20 or 30 devices will be within range of the bridge, the throughput would be 10.5 kB/s. I am designing a simple PCB with a dedicated BLE radio and a ESP32 for the job. It can even switch to 5GHz if needed.

I want to place once of these boards in tournaments at the intersection of every 4 tables, so that for a large venue there could be 20-25 multicast sources.

Is this a good path forward? Will this work? What do I need to make sure of, and what am I not considering? (I have much more experience in electronic design than I do networking). Thanks in advance!

I'm a junior assistant network engineer with 3 years experiences in IT and 1.5 years experiences into networking in a MSP. Accidentally took down a client wireless network for around 2 hours today, i can feel the blood flows through my vein. The cause was due to the newly created VRRP ID has matched to an existing using one which i have overlooked.

1) I was working with AOS 8.11. I first noticed APs was down with a specific controller, then realize the mistake and removed related VRRP configuration.

2) After some times passed and APs still haven't come back up I felt panic and client started to calling and questioning the status. I then checked APs status on the controller and found out it was out of licenses in MM.

3) Called colleague and asked for advise; it was mentioned to check with the license status. On CLI all licenses status was shown "installed on 1970-01-01". It made me felt weird but at least licenses were still presented. Checked with web GUI and it showed AP licenses usage as 5x/0 (5x AP usage over 0 license, it was originally 8x).

4) Called colleague to report back and suggested to use trial licenses to resume the operation first. Tried it and it wont let me add trial licenses due to permenant licenses were still existing. So rebooted MM and hoping it will align back.

4) MM rebooted, I checked with CLI and all licenses were gone and so as the web GUI. Now all controllers were dropped due to insufficient licenses. More panic; more calls on the way. I called my team leader and informed the incident. This time since all permenant licenses were gone I was able to insert the trial licenses.

5) Controllers started to come back up and APs were starting to come online.

I know I am at fault and no doubt about it but the licenses issue got me surprised. Nonetheless, what a day. Now I am preparing my report and hoping it wont get me fired. Lesson learnt, don't rush despite all the stresses.

I have a client complaining about WiFi dropping on brand new Meraki APs 9172 — from the logs it looks like a lot of jumping around between 5Ghz and 6Ghz but I thought this is normal as clients should roam back and forth. Because we’re running WPA3 Transition Mode with 802.11r active, is this the root cause of the issue? What am I missing here? We need the WPA3 because of 6Ghz.

I notice that I have a similar issue with UniFi where it’s WPA2/WPA3 for a primary SSID broadcasting 5Ghz and 6Ghz… wondering if it’s the same issues sometime because of running 802.11r with the WPA3

Curious if anyone has been able to test these upcoming changes in their wireless environment from Microsoft:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/servicing/os/windows/docs/2025/08/upcoming-changes-to-ntlmv1-in-windows-11-version-24h2-and-windows-server-2025

The concern might be having to reenter passwords while devices roam (non fast roaming?)

We are in between PEAP and testing TLS and these changes might force us to migrate faster. It's not the managed devices I'm worried about, but working in higher education, the BYOD implications.

Thanks in advance for any info.

Hey.
I have a wifi issue at work and I don't know what the cause could be because it literally feels cursed.
So we upgraded our 200 series Aruba APs to 600 series, that's when I noticed something unexplainable because I also needed to replace the PoE injector for this one AP as the old one only supplied 30W and the new APs need 60W for full power.

I provision the new APs on 60W and they all run fine, except this one AP at this one spot.
In this spot both the old AP and the new AP only boot when they are connected to the old 30W PoE injector, causing the new AP to only run in reduced power mode.
I tried multiple 60W injectors and the APs always behave the same so it can't be just a broken device.
I tried another newly provisioned 600 series AP aswell on yet another new 60W injector and this doesn't boot either.
On this spot on the ceiling the APs (200 series and 600 series) only want to boot when I use an old 30W injector.

What could possibly be the problem here?

Looking at refreshing a Wi-Fi environment with temporary (usually 30 days or less) mobile deployments requiring anywhere from 30 - 30,000 or more wireless clients. Deployments are scaled up and down as required.

It's currently a Cisco shop, for the most part, but all vendors are reasonably on the table. The FW/LAN side will likely remain Cisco for the foreseeable future. Price is of course a consideration, but there should be a fair amount of room.

While there are not a lot of highly specific requirements, reliability and density are top concerns.

Who would you be looking at?

​

Bit of a genuine question for the networking crowd here.

We keep seeing companies refresh WiFi and dump perfectly good Cisco Meraki APs just because they want “new kit”.

Once the AP is unclaimed and added to your dashboard, it’s literally the same hardware.

Example we’ve seen recently: MR56's new from resellers over £1500.... but Same model tested and unclaimed from previous network is around £350

Am I missing something here? I understand the cisco replace warranty etc - but still with budget to buy 3 more... is it down to company policies..

We’ve been testing loads of these lately (MR36, MR56 mostly) and once they’re claimed on our dashboard they behave exactly the same as new ones.

Curious if anyone here is running second-hand Meraki APs in production or if everyone sticks to brand new only? Genuinely interested to hear people's experience.

I've been out of the wireless side of networking for a while now. Ages ago, the organization I was at had a laptop with an external antenna assembly with software that would allow us to load a blueprint/floor plan into the software, walk the building with the laptop and then it would create a signal strength heatmap on the floor plans. I don't remember the name of the software and I'm sure there have been new tools that have emerged since then. What are y'all using these days for WiFi heat-mapping solutions?

EDIT: Wow, I've never had this many responses this quickly to posts in the past. Y'all are awesome; thanks for the feedback!

Hey so ive been a network engineer for 4 years and want to deepen my knowledge not after somthing vendor specific more a comprehensive course so im better prepared for new deployments and optimizing existing.

Not interested in Ubiquiti for various reasons, and moving away from HPE Lite in the form of Aruba Instant On. It worked fine for years, but recently has started developing connectivity issues overnight (literally) where it goes offline for no reason. Literally no reason; we have checked the commits and there weren’t any, they just decided to go offline. So looking for recommendations; small environment, 5 APs, WIFI 6E preferred, multi gig preferred, roughly 100 clients.

Edit: not looking for a cloud managed AP like a Mist or anything like that. Not interested in the recurring licensing cost and required Internet connectivity just to manage SSIDs once a year.

I am looking for some information from others.

My bosses have started enforcing wifi for all the desks in my office buildings (with return to the office being a thing) and our wifi solution in the offices isn't great to begin with.

I'm wondering for those of you with many sites that are providing corporate wireless for your users, what networking vendor are you using in 2026? I have over 100 sites and we've been using Fortinets WLC lineup with their U series access points. We have 500+ access points in the environment as well.

Over the course of when we got these things second handed, I have had a TON of complaints and run into several issues with roaming between APs, bouncing between access points randomly and dropping connection and have to force a disconnect and reconnect. Plus I've done several heat maps which show little to no issues as far as I can see and my own channel planning which doesn't seem to help at all.

I personally think that Fortinet is not leaders in any area that is not security or firewalls. Cause support isn't great and I'm just getting tired of having to support something that doesn't work.

What do you all use and why? How does it fit well and how much investment from your company did you have to put into it? It's tough because we are tight on money and time is of the essence with return to office.

Looking forward to hearing from you all. TIA ...