Do I need a zone director?

[jason_sparrow]

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.

[john_d]

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.

[jason_sparrow]

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.

[neil_neil_67001]

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.

[jason_sparrow]

Thanks.

🙂

[seanmuir]

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.