topic Do I need a zone director? in To Be Moved

Do I need a zone director?

jason_sparrow — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 18:34:46 GMT

Hi all,

I am just about to install 2 X r600 aps in my house and was wondering if I needed to buy a done director console to fine tune the aps?

They will be used in a soho environment, however I would like to ensure roaming etc is fine tuned and I can get the best out of them.

If so, would I be able to use a single licence version as this is quite cheap?

http://www.wifigear.co.uk/ruckus-zone...

Would I need to renew the licence each year?

I'm new to the ruckus fold and so I have no clue as to what I need.

Thanks in advance.

Re: Do I need a zone director?

john_d — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 18:42:01 GMT

Hi Jason,

You don't need a ZoneDirector, but it's a nice bonus. As we talked about in the last thread, if you have a ZoneDirector, you can get FW 9.12 and 9.12.1 and beyond, which gets you DFS support for the R600's, which is nice.

The main benefit of getting the ZoneDirector is that you get one centralized interface for configuration and monitoring rather than having to log into each AP and define the SSID, password, and try to piece together all the info yourself about which clients are on which AP's, and how they are roaming, etc.

It's not required for your setup, though. You will get slightly faster roams (virtually instantaneous versus a few hundred ms of hiccups) thanks to 802.11r/k on supported devices, etc. Plus you get a turnkey solution for a captive portal based guest WLAN for when you have folks visiting.

If you get a ZoneDirector, you'll be required to purchase Ruckus support contracts. The license that you linked to is not a support contract — it's to add an additional AP to the ZD1200. (For example, the ZD1205 is by default licensed for 5 AP's. If you were to add a 6th AP, you would need to buy one additional copy of that license)

The 1 year support contracts are indeed a yearly licensing cost. When you stop paying for it, you will not be allowed to apply future firmware upgrades. If you're happy with your setup at the end of your first year contract, you technically don't have to renew. But if you want new firmware, then of course you'll have to renew.

Re: Do I need a zone director?

jason_sparrow — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 18:48:50 GMT

Hi again John,

I didn't realise that was just the licence!

Looking at the cheapest zd will push me way over budget, which I have already done with the r600's

If I can pick up a second hand unit, can I purchase a 1 year license to start with?

Re: Do I need a zone director?

john_d — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 18:51:01 GMT

You're very unlikely to find a ZD1200 second-hand, but yes, you can purchase a license for a second-hand unit.

Honestly, I would start with the R600's and then consider adding a ZD later on if that's really something you want to do.

The primary use case for a home user getting a ZoneDirector IMO is if you need Ruckus SmartMesh (e.g. wireless AP to AP bridging for homes without ethernet connectivity) capability.

Re: Do I need a zone director?

jason_sparrow — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 19:03:28 GMT

Ok point taken.

Whilst on the subject would a zd1000 be suitable?

Found one reasonably cheap on ebay uk..

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ruckus-Wireless-ZoneDirector-1000-901-1025-UK00-licensed-for-50AP-w-pwr-su...

Re: Do I need a zone director?

john_d — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 20:12:24 GMT

I wouldn't recommend it. ZD1000 went EOL before 802.11ac AP's were supported, and ZD1100 is also EOL at 9.10, which won't get you the benefits I mentioned with 9.12 and beyond.

Re: Do I need a zone director?

jason_sparrow — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 20:16:09 GMT

Thanks John, i'll avoid those then.

And again, ill take your advice and see how i get on with the AP's without a ZD for a while, and then maybe have a search for a used 1200 in a few months or so.

Re: Do I need a zone director?

neil_neil_67001 — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 12:01:35 GMT

Hi Jason,

If you only have two access points and you're using them at home then you will be perfectly fine just to configure them as standalone access points. You won't need the additional features a ZoneDirector offers.

The roaming won't be an issue either way.

Re: Do I need a zone director?

seanmuir — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 21:49:09 GMT

If your traversing from one stand alone AP to another, the client will need to make a new DHCP request on each AP it attempts to join, as stand alone AP's are not aware of each other.

The main thing here is the client has to go through Layer 2 entry on every AP, and if you have a passphrase on every AP, it wil have to go through the handshake mechanism, which adds delay and you will drop a few packets.

Once authenticated the clients will then be held in the connected/unconnected client cache of all the AP's in the network, until either the AP is rebooted, or the cache is overwritten or purged

Note: I am unsure as toward how long a stand alone AP stores the unconnected client cache

If you want fast/seemless transition between each AP, you must use a ZD as that supports 802.11r/k.

802.11r/k are not supported on stand alone AP's at the moment...

You may also want to consider the following options in the cli of your stand alone AP's to assist with roaming, as certain device hold on to AP's which can impact client performance:

set ofdm-only
set bss-minrate 24
set roam_factor wlanX <1-10>

For a full explanation towards the configuration of smart-roam see the following:

https://support.ruckuswireless.com/answers/000002277

I personally have seen great results using this in large scale roaming networks, but the link above does mention that some Apple devices dont like it - it's worth a test, as I have seen no issues when using it so far.

One note is that if you use a ZD, you must configure the session idle timeout on the WLAN to marry up with your DHCP server session idle timeout, or the set it to the max value of 500mins.

Re: Do I need a zone director?

jason_sparrow — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 22:27:07 GMT

Thanks Sean.

To be honest, so far it seems to be working ok and I haven't really noticed any 'lag' while roaming.

I am literally using them at home and I'm getting full coverage throughout and coverage in places where the Unifi struggled.

I'll see how it goes for a while and then make a decision on the zd.

They are quite expensive for my basic needs!

Re: Do I need a zone director?

john_d — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 22:32:55 GMT

To clarify a bit: Most clients when roaming from BSSID to BSSID within the same SSID (e.g. AP to AP) implement a heuristic where they attempt to ping their last known default gateway if they had a DHCP lease. If the default gateway still responds they assume their DHCP lease is still active and will continue to use it, without the process of reacquiring a DHCP lease.

However, Sean is correct that you will see some delay as the client needs to re-establish the 4-way WPA2 handshake, and this will incur some packet loss, for a duration on the order of 1/4 second or so.

802.11r/k transitions skip all of this, and as a result you can do seamless AP to AP transitions and not lose a single packet in the process. However, it is rare that a home consumer really has the need for this level of roaming fidelity.

As far as ofdm-only, bss-minrate, and roam_factor, I would be careful for a home setup with these options. Specifically, ofdm-only and bss-minrate of 24mbit would completely block out 802.11b agents, and there's a surprising number of consumer things that sadly are still 802.11b — fitbit scales, Nest thermostats, and most other wifi based devices that operate off alkaline batteries. You really don't want to waste your time finding out "the hard way" that the latest toy someone bought won't connect to your $1500 wifi network because of a setting you flipped!

I would only try adding these options if you are really seeing roaming issues with clients clinging to distant AP's and seeing poor performance.

Re: Do I need a zone director?

seanmuir — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 22:34:08 GMT

no worries and good luck 🙂

Re: Do I need a zone director?

jason_sparrow — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 05:39:32 GMT

Thanks John,

Strangely enough, on the subject of legacy devices, I do have Nest theronostats, but on the Unifi I had legacy support disabled as I didn't realise they were only 'b' devices, however, they still connected!

So, is it true that they will drag throughout down for non legacy devices?

I don't seem to get any speed issues on the 2.4 network that they are connected to?

Re: Do I need a zone director?

jason_sparrow — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 05:43:44 GMT

Thanks.

🙂

Re: Do I need a zone director?

john_d — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 05:50:52 GMT

Upon double checking, the Nest looks like it's a b/g/n device and not just a b device -- it's 2.4GHz. But it's still true that there's a surprising number of devices that might be B only, the Fitbit Aria scale being a good example.

The problem is that devices connecting to your network at a slow bitrate will drag down throughput for everyone else while they are active. For each AP, all devices share talking time on one channel -- it's like a dinner table. If someone talks really fast, they get to convey more thoughts in a shorter period of time, but if someone else talks really slowly, what can you do? Two people can't talk at once, and the only choice is either to "waste everyone's time" listening to the slow person talk, or say "no you're not allowed to talk because you're too slow" and it's better for everyone else at the table.

And here is where I think enterprise and consumer use cases differ. On an enterprise network, you are often servicing more clients than you have capacity to service (at the desired average throughput, etc). On a home network, the only reason you connect something to your home network is because you want it to have wifi. So, you can make a "for the greater good" argument on an enterprise network for why a device that can weakly connect to your network simply shouldn't be allowed to use it, because it would occupy a lot of airtime talking at slow bitrates like 24mbit when other devices can easily speak at 300+mbit rates, over 10x faster.

But on the other hand, the "nice" thing that bss-minrate (or ofdm-only) does is that it's a polite hint to N-capable devices that if your current AP's slowest allowed rate is still not working for you, maybe it's time to look for a different AP.

(Note that there's other technical caveats too -- for example, broadcast/multicast traffic must be transmitted at the lowest possible rate, so setting bss-minrate to 24 means that all the broadcast traffic gets transmitted at 24mbit rather than 1.1mbit or 5.5mbit. They're worth considering, but most home networks also do not have a lot of broadcast/multicast traffic)

The short version is, I don't think these values have much impact on a home network. You can use bss-minrate to artificially shrink the coverage radius of your AP's in a way that doesn't require reducing transmit power.

Re: Do I need a zone director?

jason_sparrow — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 06:07:06 GMT

Thanks again for the detailed explanation John.

As i said, im not seeing any real problems at the moment, but will keep that in mind.

🙂

Re: Do I need a zone director?

neil_neil_67001 — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 08:12:43 GMT

Jason, you are correct that your needs are quite basic, and you should keep things simple.

Fast roaming is a specialized requirement that is only considered in very specific circumstances, and is not only NOT required for home use, it's pretty much unconfigurable for home use.

When you move from one AP to another, the worst that will happen is that you need to generate a new key, which is so quick it just won't affect anything you are doing.

There's a lot of technical information being offered in this thread, which is very well intentioned, however it just serves to confuse the issue - some of it is irrelevant, and some of it is technically wrong.

Just stick with a couple of access points that are manually configured and you'll be fine. If you have specific questions about how things work I'd be happy to explain.

Neil Mac
CWNE #113, CWNT
Senior Technical Trainer, Ruckus Wireless

Re: Do I need a zone director?

seanmuir — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 08:49:05 GMT

I have smart-roam configured on my home network (ZD1200, 1 x r710 and 1 x r700) and it works just fine. If anything the use off smart-roam increases the potential throughput to the client. I suppose it's each to their own 🙂

Re: Do I need a zone director?

neil_neil_67001 — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 08:54:06 GMT

Hi Sean.

Jason is a novice asking about two stand-alone access points, and just needs simple advice.

There is no justification for suggesting use of a ZoneDirector.

There's a lot of technical claims being made here that just aren't relevant.

Keep it simple !

Re: Do I need a zone director?

seanmuir — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 09:09:22 GMT

The DCF MAC issue (throughput fairness) is not relevant on Ruckus equipment as it uses airtime fairness. So even if you had a legacy devices connected to your network all clients get the same airtime regardless of standard.

In short 802.11b clients will not bring down the performance of your Ruckus network.

Hope this helps 🙂