Teams and Zooms keeps disconnect

Question

We have one client where ruckus zone director (ZD3050) is installed with firmware version - 9.8.3.0 build 44 and ap's are (zf7025 ,zf7341 ,zf7321). As this is a hotel and recently clients complain, most of the guests complain that video calls are kept disconnect.

We checked the internet line, which is fine even though we test video calls over the wired connection and didn't experience the video calls' disconnection (teams and zoom, skype ).

Could you please advise what setting I need to review on the zone director?

eizens_putnins · Answer

Never enable 802.11r, if you are not sure that all clients support it, as it can prevent clients not supporting 802.11r from connecting to network at all, with different weird messages. For example, I had in the past case that when 802.11r was enabled, DELL laptops with Intel WiFi card were unable to connect to network with WPA2-PSK, showing message "wrong password". Disabling 802.11r fixed issue completely. Some other devices don't have that clear problems, just have more errors and disconnect/reconnect often. So always check if it is enabled, ti should be not, if it is not really supported.

Currently 802.11r is supported on Windows laptops (from W7 to W10) only on networks with WPA2-Enterprise -- with RADIUS authentication, and only with compatible adapter and driver. And no windows laptops support 802.11r with WPA2-PSK, or with web-authentication... I am not that sure about Apple devices, but as usually Apple devices are worst customers, I suppose situation is similar there.

In fact, only handheld devices (phones and tablets, both iOS and Android) really support 802.11r with both WPA2-PSK and WPA2-Enterprise (RADIUS), so networks where no laptops devices are expected can have 802.11r safely enabled. If you think about this, it is  logical, that handheld devices support it, but problem is that any unsupporting device trying to connect to same network will have issues.

eizens_putnins · Answer

Roaming decisions are made by client device, network can't force client not to roam.  Some clients are just bad with roaming, whatever you do.

Anyway, having 2 AP with similar signal level in same area (as you seems to have there)  may be not good for device to make a decision, even so by normal design device must not even start for looking for other AP to roam to if signal is better than -70 dbm.

To avoid often changes of channels you need to disable Channel-fly and set period of background scanning longer (2000 sec for example). But in this log there are no info about channel switch, so this probably doesn't happen.

Check that you have fast roaming (802.11r/k) disabled - it can be source of heavy problems for incompliant clients,  if enabled (no windows laptops support it, for example) .

There are 2 settings, they are in advanced settings for WLAN:

near the top check-box for 802.11r with label

Enable 802.11r FT Roaming

(Recommended to enable 802.11k Neighbor-list Report for assistant

and down check-box for 802.11k.

abhijit_gurav · Answer

Dear eizens_putnins

Thanks for the update. What I notice from the events logs that Users keep disconnect from one ap to another. example as below

Could you please advise how to stop this, as this might be why the video call disconnections?

Could you please advise what the setting I need to do to stop frequent channel switchover is?

Events/Activities Refresh (To stop Auto Refresh, click Stop button in Toolbox)Show More.
Date/Time Severity User Activities
2021/01/23  11:37:24 Low   AP[Room - 3205] radio [11g/n] detects User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] in WLAN[Carlton_Guest] roams from AP[Room - 3205-6]
2021/01/23  11:37:24 Low   AP[Room - 3205-6] radio [11g/n] detects User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] in WLAN[Carlton_Guest] roams out to AP[Room - 3205]
2021/01/23  11:37:18 Low   AP[Room - 3205-6] radio [11g/n] detects User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] in WLAN[Carlton_Guest] roams from AP[Room - 3205]
2021/01/23  11:37:18 Low   AP[Room - 3205] radio [11g/n] detects User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] in WLAN[Carlton_Guest] roams out to AP[Room - 3205-6]
2021/01/23  11:37:15 Low   User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] leave WLAN[Carlton_Guest] at AP[Room - 3205] with Session Time[348.50 sec] RX Bytes[45740957] TX Bytes[36662409]
2021/01/23  11:31:27 Low   User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] joins WLAN[Carlton_Guest] from AP[Room - 3205]
2021/01/23  11:31:24 Low   User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] leave WLAN[Carlton_Guest] at AP[Room - 3205] with Session Time[522.05 sec] RX Bytes[53213690] TX Bytes[52891262]
2021/01/23  11:31:24 Low   User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] disconnects from WLAN[Carlton_Guest] at AP[Room - 3205]
2021/01/23  11:22:41 Low   User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] joins WLAN[Carlton_Guest] from AP[Room - 3205]
2021/01/23  11:22:38 Low   User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] leave WLAN[Carlton_Guest] at AP[Room - 3205] with Session Time[537.51 sec] RX Bytes[74188288] TX Bytes[47812275]
2021/01/23  11:22:38 Low   User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] disconnects from WLAN[Carlton_Guest] at AP[Room - 3205]
2021/01/23  11:13:41 Low   User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] joins WLAN[Carlton_Guest] from AP[Room - 3205]
2021/01/23  11:13:38 Low   User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] leave WLAN[Carlton_Guest] at AP[Room - 3205-6] with Session Time[529.41 sec] RX Bytes[35350857] TX Bytes[65960514]
2021/01/23  11:13:38 Low   User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] disconnects from WLAN[Carlton_Guest] at AP[Room - 3205-6]
2021/01/23  11:05:16 Low   AP[Room - 3205-6] radio [11g/n] detects User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] in WLAN[Carlton_Guest] roams from AP[Room - 3205]
2021/01/23  11:05:16 Low   AP[Room - 3205] radio [11g/n] detects User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] in WLAN[Carlton_Guest] roams out to AP[Room - 3205-6]
2021/01/23  11:04:49 Low   User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] joins WLAN[Carlton_Guest] from AP[Room - 3205]
2021/01/23  11:04:47 Low   User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] leave WLAN[Carlton_Guest] at AP[Room - 3205] with Session Time[542.05 sec] RX Bytes[19774078] TX Bytes[56800155]
2021/01/23  11:04:47 Low   User[2c:f0:ee:33:24:ec] disconnects from WLAN[Carlton_Guest] at AP[Room - 3205]