Stand alone AP (ZF7372) and band-balancing

[erik_farey]

I have a ZF7372 running 9.8.1.0.101 and trying to find out how to enable band-balancing via its CLI. I am not running the AP with a ZD as it is a stand alone device. I see the CLI for band-balancing but am not sure how to enable or configure it. I have both the 2.4 & 5Ghz radios running the same SSID's and security settings. Below are you readouts when I look at the band-balancing settings.

Can someone tell me how the commands work and/or the correct settings to move dual band clients over to the 5Ghz radio.

rkscli: get band-balancing
Band Balancing:
Under Mesh AP : Off

rkscli: get band-balancing wlan0
Band Balancing:
wlan0: Disable
Rssi Threshold limit: wlan0, 20
Band Bal limit: wifi0, 0
MinStaThreshold limit: AP, 10
Under Mesh AP : Off

rkscli: get band-balancing wlan8
Band Balancing:
wlan8: Disable
Rssi Threshold limit: wlan8, 20
Band Bal limit: wifi1, 0
MinStaThreshold limit: AP, 10
Under Mesh AP : Off

rkscli: set band-balancing
parameter error
Usage: set band-balancing {options}
-- {|all}
-- mesh-ap {enable|disable}

[primoz_marinsek]

Two things you need to understand here:

1. the decision is always on the client side
2. If the AP is too aggressive on the balancing it might cause the client to not connect to any AP radio at all. So the balancing mechanism NEEDS to be very gentle and clients must be persuaded to the other band not kicked to it.

Yet another thing we saw at a recent stress test was that clients now tend to prefer the 5GHz over 2.4 so you might not be seeing this problem for long anyway.

[john_d]

I've had similar experiences as Primoz with modern clients. Before I thought I had roaming/2.4 stickiness issues, when in reality I had poor 5GHz coverage. Now that I have enough AP's to provide a strong 5GHz signal on my premises, I've found that even with no smart-roam and load/band-balancing at play, my clients generally prefer 5GHz.

Currently on my network I have 25 5GHz clients and 4 2.4GHz clients. Of those, 3 only support 2.4GHz. And this includes several Macs and iOS devices that roam around.

I find that especially with smart phones, their 5GHZ reception (And wifi reception in general) is not as good as a laptop/desktop. So while an area might seem sufficiently covered on 5GHz when testing with a laptop, it might be a different story with a mobile device.

[primoz_marinsek]

Another thing you might do is to lower the transmit power of the 2.4G radio. Maybe try -6dB. It will make the cell smaller but the speeds should remain the same. If they drop considerably try using -3dB.

Yet another thing you plan your cells for different RSSI values. Try -67dBm for 5G and -72dBm for the 2.4 band but these values are application specific also.

There are other things to try and consider also but this is what I usually start with.

[primoz_marinsek]

Thanks for the star, but I made a mistake here. It should be the other way around; it's -67dBm for the 2,4gig and -72dBm for the 5gig, since the noise floor of the 5gig band is a lower and the obstacle penetration is somewhat worse.

[erik_farey]

I see that there is a 100.0.0.0.127 release out. Is this the latest firmware for the AP? If so does this have the fix for the band steering?