topic Re: Roaming depending roam-factor in Access Points - Indoor and Outdoor

Roaming depending roam-factor

nikita_kulikov — Tue, 25 Dec 2018 08:26:14 GMT

I tested of work roaming depending roam-factor between R510 and R720 (both APs saw each other). APs worked under vSZ (vscg-5.0.0.0.675). For understand levels of roam-factor I used https://support.ruckuswireless.com/articles/000002277.
I set strong roam-factor equal 10 in console vSZ for test. Joined to one APs and then chanjed location for signal degradation. But roaming wasn't fast. It appered only after 2-3 minutes! Situation repeated when I returned to first AP.

Situation was similar for another values roam-factor. I tested it for smartphone and laptop.

Can anybody explain me why this is happening?

Re: Roaming depending roam-factor

rafael_rocha_i5 — Wed, 26 Dec 2018 21:02:30 GMT

maybe you are experiencing a normal roaming ?in normal roaming the decision to change is always done by the clients devices.

To see if Smart-Roam is the responsible for the roaming see if you have any logs indicate as in the article.

"2013/10/08 09:04:23 Low testuser User[testuser] disconnected by admin from WLAN[captivep] at AP[24:c9:a1:28:f0:80]"

Re: Roaming depending roam-factor

nikita_kulikov — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 07:43:45 GMT

I.e. if in logs there's not records "disconnected by admin" it means that controller didn't make a dicision about roaming client?

Re: Roaming depending roam-factor

tim_brumbaugh — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 15:21:31 GMT

Make sure that when you have two or more radios the signal drops to a threshold below where the client wants to stay. Try and get the signals to overlap at -65db to -70db, if the signal is still pretty strong the client will not want to leave the AP it is on.

Re: Roaming depending roam-factor

rafael_rocha_i5 — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 17:32:49 GMT

Yes correct.
By readings, the smart-roaming is like kicking the client so he can restart the association process to choose a better access point and the controller will handle the differents request forceful pointing to the better one like kind of "blocking" the device to still choosing the the less effective access point.
kind look like the band steering, but instead of play hard so the device choose 5.0 ghz the game is to point to the best AP.

Re: Roaming depending roam-factor

nikita_kulikov — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 07:28:32 GMT

I tested roaming with Aruba Utilities on client (smartphone, Android). On screenshot there wasn't RSSI below -70dBm (client does roaming on -75dBm -80dBm). Controller saw client a little better in this moment.

Re: Roaming depending roam-factor

tim_brumbaugh — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 17:00:47 GMT

So on the controller what was the signal received from the client, as the AP' send out a really strong signal up to 7x stronger than the smart phone so it is key to look at the signal receive level from the client to the AP and that is done on the controller. The Rucks SCI analytics server is a great tool for gathering this type of information and the demo license is good for I think 90 days or more but is a fantastic monitoring and reporting tool.

Re: Roaming depending roam-factor

nikita_kulikov — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 06:26:28 GMT

Thanks for answers, Tim.
I will set up Ruckus SCI and will test my stand again.
I hope that I will get new information from SCI.