topic Re: Any reason not to enable 802.11r/k in Access Points - Indoor and Outdoor

Any reason not to enable 802.11r/k

jim_michael — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 02:42:52 GMT

We have a lot of iOS clients on our wlans and I'm wanting to know if there is any reason NOT to enable 802.11r and k on these wlans? (we have ZD1100 running 9.9.1) Is there any downside or negative effect I'm not aware of? I'm always wary of settings that are defaulted to off... makes me wonder if there's a reason you wouldn't want to enable them.

Re: Any reason not to enable 802.11r/k

monnat_systems — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 08:00:38 GMT

Hi jim

802.11r/k is primarily for seamless roaming and if you WiFi network is working ok including roaming for all type of devices including ioS then its ok to have it off

however if i would be in your place then i would enable it as all devices do NOT support and those do support will have better and quick roaming experience.

apple device by the way support 802.11r/k so better to have it ON...

read - https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT202628

Hope this helps in making better decision...

Re: Any reason not to enable 802.11r/k

jacob_bennefiel — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 13:49:11 GMT

From personal experience we have a large ruckus deployment and 802.11r isn't ready for prime time. We run a 802.1x network and with 802.11r IoS devices couldn't connect after the radius authentication hand shake. When we turned off 802.11r the devices could connect again. If your network is working fine then leave it off.

Re: Any reason not to enable 802.11r/k

joe_brown_72004 — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 15:58:30 GMT

I am using the zero IT activation and have r/k enabled seems to work fine for most devices, however we have had a few 7-8 year old laptops that will not connect once the r/k was turned on. We where having issues with devices moving from AP to AP when mobile, with turning on the r/k that has improved that issue.

Re: Any reason not to enable 802.11r/k

john_d — Sat, 11 Jul 2015 06:56:04 GMT

Certain extremely old pieces of hardware (especially 802.11b/g devices) refuse to connect or even recognize networks that have 802.11r enabled. I got burned by this after digging up some PC relics to salvage some data off of them.

But they are few and far in between. If you are concerned about this, you may want to make a separate "legacy" SSID for such devices.

Re: Any reason not to enable 802.11r/k

austin_wahl — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 13:52:24 GMT

just clone the wlan and have the same ssid, havent had any issues when doing this. some olderish macbooks wont connect with it on, almost every device 2 years or newer will support 11k/r.

Re: Any reason not to enable 802.11r/k

eizens_putnins — Fri, 06 Dec 2019 09:40:02 GMT

Even so it is an old question, I want to post correction.
Actually situation isn't that good -- still mainly just mobile devices support k/r (Android, Ios from v.6.). Windows PCs and laptops support 802.11k/r only in W10 and only for Radius Authentication. W7/W8 doesn't support 11k/r, and W10 doesn't support it with WPA2/PSK.
Windows devices can (and will) have issues (starting from packet loss to disconnects or inability to connect) -- that mainly depends on which WLAN card and driver are used.
So if network is used mainly for Windows PCs without Radius authentication - there is no reason to enable it, as it will not work anyway and may create issues.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000021562/network-and-io/wireless-networkin...
Some older Intel adapters with W7 even show misleading message "wrong key", when try to connect to WPA2/PSK network with k/r enabled.
Hope it helps -- I had many cases when customers enabled k/r and had difficult to diagnose issues, and disabling k/r fixed things.