topic Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around. in Community and Online Support Services

The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

javier_sanchez_ — Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:15:00 GMT

I have a network with 16 AP (10 R500 and 6 R300) and a 1200 controller,2 SSID with WPA/AES and i need use a softphone but i have the next issue with some users:
All the Iphone ́s was disconnect constantly
An a Samsung Note 4 lost wifi signal and block the wifi networks when it moves of a R500 to a R300 (We need to turn on and off the airplane mode to resolve the issue)
More than 10 users with laptops HP and wireless card ralink rt3290 can not connect with the network (i upgrade the drivers and some laptops can connect now but the navigation on the net was terrible slow)
When i walk through the office and change of one AP to another and if i am in a call this ends, and the use of softphone it is very important in this project.

I hope anyone can help me.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

michael_brado — Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:19:00 GMT

I think you should go to Tech Support.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

seanmuir — Sat, 02 Jan 2016 21:53:06 GMT

If you are using 9.10 MR1and have force dhcp enabled you will have a roaming issues - this will be fixed in 9.10 MR2 and 9.12MR2

Solution is if you have force dhcp enabled is to disable this function to solve roaming issues.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

javier_sanchez_ — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 02:48:42 GMT

Thanks i will try it, and comment how work it.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

bill_burns_6069 — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 23:33:28 GMT

If "force dhcp" turns out not to be your problem, ask your support rep if the "smartroam" feature is appropriate for your location/application.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

seanmuir — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 00:51:54 GMT

NP I know that disabling it fixed for me when i tried it, but we need force DHCP so I have had to downgrade to 9.10 GA.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

john_d — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 01:12:32 GMT

I'm a little afraid that if his issue involves users disconnecting already, SmartRoam might only serve to make that worse.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

bill_burns_6069 — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 04:36:38 GMT

Yes. That could be. (which is why I hedged by asking him to consult w/ ruckus support)
..but my reading (which could be incorrect) was that he had (both) difficulties w/ devices that were physically roaming and having a "stuck client" issue as well as stationary devices that were losing connectivity.

If he's got an environment where the client devices are very uniform/controlled, he may have options for reconfiguring wireless preferences on every device that needs to run a soft-phone.
(and that may be necessary for a soft-phone environment)
..or maybe he has options for going w/ spectralink (hard) WiFi phones but those are all client-side solutions...

Failing that, the only way *I* (who does not know everything) can think to address stuck client issues is w/ smartroam. (maybe combined w/ a high density of APs)

I do not know how to address the issue w/ stationary clients losing connectivity.
If anyone else does know how to fix that problem (and if this "force DHCP" tweak doesn't fix things) please chime in.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

sid_sok — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 17:18:45 GMT

Hi Javier,

First I would separate your problem into two different event, one is the client constantly disconnecting even when the client is not "roaming" and two, client stop working after a roam.

For the first issue, it's kind of hard to say if the client is truly not roaming, even stationary client can "roam" between APs under the correct, or better description is under the wrong condition. You should be able to review the controller log to see if the client is truly changing APs or not. If it is not "roaming" and you are still "disconnecting", please verify if the client is still associated but just can not pass traffic. I have seen a few case where this was the case where client's seem to loose IP connectivity for a while and was still associated to the AP. If this is the case 9.12MR2, which should be released soon, should fix that.

For the second issue, Bill is probably correct, it's either a sticky client issue and the client is stuck on an inappropriate AP. The only thing that I would suggest that is different is not to use Smartroam if you have Apple OS or iOS, as they have an automatic blacklist feature where too many kick via smartroam will trigger this feature and keep the client from connecting to the wlan again for sometime. Depending on the AP density, I would use a higher BSS minrate to ensure that the client can not hear an AP's beacon when it's too far away, this way it will be the client decision to roam if it can't hear the AP's beacon at 12 Mbps for example. You can use BSS min rate and Smartroam at the same time but it's generally not needed.

Without any more data to go on, I would suggest two things:
1. upgrade to 9.12MR2 as soon at it comes out
2. set the wlan BSS min rate to 12

Force DHCP should should not be needed/used, it was originally designed to keep people from statically configuring a client with the same IP as the Gateway or the controller causing network issue, it was not designed to help a client roam.

Sid

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

javier_sanchez_ — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 17:45:38 GMT

Thanks for your help, i actually upgrade the system to 9.12 and works better, now i try with the Min rate and comment my results.

Kind regards

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

john_d — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 18:17:41 GMT

Looking forward to 9.12 MR2 then. I've got an R710 and R700 and am noticing right now that some clients after a few days will have association but no traffic flow, and that's started to result in a frustrating experience, especially for set top boxes that don't have a way to toggle wifi quickly (and instead require a full reboot).

But yes, other than that, everything that you've said matches my experience. Some clients are both sticky and intolerant to being kicked without taking that as a hint to never join the network. Or they'll repeatedly attempt to rejoin the same AP after being
SmartRoam kicked. For those clients, bss-minrate is a more useful/powerful tool to make them un-stick.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

bill_burns_6069 — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 20:35:28 GMT

'though this post recommends smartroam and smartroam may not be an appropriate solution for you, there may be other things about it that help...
https://forums.ruckuswireless.com/ruckuswireless/topics/best-practice-configs-for-a-high-density-dep...

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

seanmuir — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 21:25:55 GMT

I too have a ZD1200 with a r710 and r700 running 9.12 and i dont see these issues at all

Albeit that I dont have force DHCP enabled.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

bill_burns_6069 — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 21:38:46 GMT

Good to hear.
I wonder what the differences are between your configs and environments.

John + Sean:
What (of the following) do you have configured? (or un-configured?)
SmartRoam
ofdm-only
bss-minrate
load-balancing
band-balancing

Do you have a have a high density of Clients, a high density of APs or neither?
(with many clients per AP, many APs per building or neither?)

Do you cover large outdoor areas, obstructed indoor environments (w/ lots of metal, cinder-block, etc.) or neither?

Are the majority of your WiFi clients 5Gig capable?
On average, how many of your clients are on the 5Ghz side of your APs?

If your users were having WiFi problems, would they bother reporting them?
(my users often don't)

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

seanmuir — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 21:50:53 GMT

I have got the following configured:

smart-roam
ofdm-only
bss-minrate
load-balancing
band-balancing

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

john_d — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 21:51:17 GMT

I have SmartRoam configured at level 1 (5dBm). Reasoning: Being connected to such a ridiculously low wifi signal on my site is worse than just not being connected to wifi at all.

I don't use ofdm-only (some AA battery powered wifi devices like smart scales are still 802.11b). I have bss-minrate set at 5.5, and load+band balancing enabled with no further tweaks.

I have relatively low density of AP's and clients (3-5 AP's per site, about 10 clients per AP). However, both locations have high speed internet (100mbit to 200mbit) and clients are sensitive to requiring bursts of full speed internet.

One site covers a large outdoor area (pool) and offers free guest internet as a good neighborly deed. Almost all the clients are dual-band, and on average, the only clients on 2.4GHz are 2.4GHZ-only clients. The one exception I've noticed is that smartphones under roaming stress (e.g. rapidly walking between rooms) will often fall back to 2.4GHz for a few minutes before roaming back to 5GHz, which is fine.

On my site, I actually have one machine in each room doing around-the-clock random bandwidth testing and so I am very aware if usable throughput ever falls below 100mbit for a station.

On the other site (my parents' mansion), there's one heavy social media user and two nontechnical parents. I occasionally get complaints about wifi connectivity/performance but so far that's mainly been due to their ISP having downtime.

I find that most users don't complain about connectivity/performance issues unless they're extremely severe. But of course that depends on who you're dealing with. I'm every IT desk's worst nightmare — I've routinely complained for wifi speeds getting below 80-100mbit.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

mike_clark_7652 — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 22:06:19 GMT

On the ZD models we noticed roaming will not work with WPA make sure you have security set to WPA2.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

seanmuir — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 22:09:01 GMT

smart-roam level 4
bss-minrate 24
band-balancing set to 0%
load balancing set to 17dB on each radio (enough for any client to obtain top bitrate).

I have the same configuration on one off my stadium designs and I also use proxy-arp & vlan pooling (router confgured with loopback interface)

Concurrent sessions are around about 10,000 with the seating capacity in the bowl of 30,000 in the venue.

My SCI says that the achievable throughput per client, when the network is loaded, is 19.1Mbps per client.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

michael_brado — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 22:28:49 GMT

Thsse are highest/extreme case settings Sean, maybe ok for your density. Typically, keep Smartroam <= 3, bss-minrate <= 12.

Re: The Roaming not work, and users disconnect constantly even not move around.

bill_burns_6069 — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 22:31:10 GMT

Do you mean the ZoneFlex (ZF) models?
..as opposed to ZD? (APs connected to Zone Director controllers)

Do you mean that you think non ZF APs (like the R300, R500, R700, R710) do not have this problem or do you suspect that all Ruckus APs may have this issue?

..or do you mean that any Ruckus AP connected to a ZoneDirector has this issue?