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Enabling 802.11r disables PMK caching and OKC?

pawelm
New Contributor

In Ruckus Best Practice (https://support.ruckuswireless.com/documents/2339-smartzone-voice-over-ip-voip-best-practices-design... ) I have found info that "Enabling 802.11r will disable PMK caching and OKC on that SSID."

Seems very strange. Is it so?

2 REPLIES 2

Vineet_nejwala
Moderator
Moderator

@pawelm 

No it won't. On my 802.1X WLAN I enabled 802.11r and when checking "show running-config all" my WLAN still has the PMK/OKC enabled.

PMK Caching Support: Enabled
OKC Support: Enabled

Best Regards

Vineet

JonVr
New Contributor

Below some documentation:

PMK Caching and Opportunistic Key Caching
Pairwise Master Key (PMK) caching and Opportunistic Key Caching (OKC) allow clients to roam without having to repeat the entire 802.1X authentication process.

 

PMK Caching
PMK caching allows the client to skip 802.1X authentication to any AP to which it has previously authenticated (only the 4-way handshake is required). PMK Caching is the method defined in the 802.11i specification, which also defined WPA2.


OKC Caching
With this method, a client can skip the 802.1X authentication to an AP as long as the client has authenticated successfully to at least one of the APs in the same zone as the an AP that handled the previous successful authentication. In this case, the PMK is cached at a central location (ZoneDirector).

 

Radio Resource Management: Radio Resource Management utilizes 802.11k Neighbor Reports, which are sent by the AP to inform clients of the preferred roaming target AP. The client sends a neighbor report request to an AP, and the AP returns a neighbor report containing information about known neighbor APs that are candidates for a service set transition.

Note: Background Scanning (Services & Profiles > Services) and Report Rogue Devices (Services & Profiles > WIPS) must be enabled for 802.11k radio resource management to work properly. If these options are not enabled, the AP will send neighbor reports consisting of only APs found on the same channel as the operating channel of the AP.

Note: If 802.11k is disabled, fast roaming between APs is achieved using Opportunistic Key Caching (OKC) and Pairwise Master Key caching (PMK caching). These methods also require Background Scanning to be enabled. Both methods allow clients to roam without having to repeat the entire 802.1X authentication process. For more information, see PMK Caching and Opportunistic Key Caching.