I wanted to start a new thread but found this which described my situation precisely. Some background: I had a single R710 in the house for some time but it didn't cover all the house well and especially the backyard. I bought two more R710s. The main (older) one was centrally on the ceiling of the second floor. I placed another one in one corner of the basement and the third one in another. They were on tables facing up. Those placements were purely for testing and I was planning to put the second on the first floor ceiling and the third on the basement ceiling. But it didn't come to it.
They were all on the latest unleashed and formed a network. At first, none of the devices roamed. I stood with my phone next to the AP in the basement and it was still connected to the AP on the second floor with very weak signal. Then I set smart-roam to 3. It was a disaster. Devices started to jump from AP to AP when stationary disconnecting from the network. Then I found that smart-roam 1 was better but 2 was still bad. Now it's at 1. There were still problems with jumps and disconnections, so I left only 2 APs for testing, one on the second floor ceiling and the other - in the basement. Stationary devices kind of stabilized but my phone, not iPhone but a Pixel 4a on Android 12, keeps disconnecting with about 50% chance when roaming from AP to AP.
There is one (I am sure more) spot in the house where the signals from both APs are similar, with the basement AP's signal being a little lower. After observing the behavior it seems the smart-roam pushes the phone to the AP with the lower signal but the phone tries to reconnect to the AP with the stronger signal. After a few back and forth the phone switches to LTE, then after some time connects to WiFi again. In the meantime it loses network and interrupts whatever is going on on the phone. See the screenshots of the typical connection.
Why does smart-roam pushes devices to the lower signal?
I also noticed that several of my WiFi cameras on 5 GHz band roamed to the further AP. Two of them are literally within 1-2 meters from the second floor AP but they are mostly connected to the AP in the basement.
The main problems are with phones. When moving around the house they often disconnect when roaming, not always but more often than expected. The bigger problem when they are stationary in the spots where signals from the two APs are similar. They jump back and forth and disconnect from time to time.
I googled and read a lot of guides and recommendations, and I am stuck with this situation and don't see what I can change anymore. I don't believe "this is how it should work". I am reluctant to reduce the power of the APs because I wanted to get a better signal in the backyard, so I need at least one AP with high signal. Even if I reduce the power, I will still have spots where the power of 2 APs will be almost equal.
Please help!
I think the big question is why smart-roam pushes devices to APs with lower signal. Also, I looked at the logs and saw many Deauthentication Code Reasons 3 instead of 8. Why?
Below is the config of the wlan my phone was on. I enabled Load Balancing only recently as the last resort but it didn't change anything. Band balancing is not enabled in the global settings and the wlan is 5 GHz only.
NAME = xxx
Tx. Rate of Management Frame(2.4GHz) = 6.0Mbps
Tx. Rate of Management Frame(5GHz) = 6.0Mbps
Beacon Interval = 100ms
SSID = xxx
Description = xxx
Type = Standard Usage
Authentication = open
Encryption = wpa2
Algorithm = aes
Passphrase = xxx
FT Roaming = Enabled
802.11k Neighbor report = Enabled
Web Authentication = Disabled
Authentication Server = Disabled
Called-Station-Id type = wlan-bssid
Tunnel Mode = Disabled
Background Scanning = Enabled
Max. Clients = 100
Isolation per AP = Disabled
Isolation across AP = Disabled
Zero-IT Activation = Disabled
Priority = High
Load Balancing = Enabled
Band Balancing = Enabled
Wifi6 = Disabled
Service = Enabled
Dynamic PSK = Disabled
Rate Limiting Uplink = Disabled
PerSSID Rate Limiting Uplink = 0
Rate Limiting Downlink = Disabled
PerSSID Rate Limiting Downlink = 0
Auto-Proxy configuration:
Status = Disabled
Inactivity Timeout:
Status = Enabled
Timeout = 10 Minutes
VLAN-ID = 1
Dynamic VLAN = Disabled
Closed System = Disabled
Https Redirection = Disabled
OFDM-Only State = Enabled
Multicast Filter State = Disabled
Directed Multicast= Enabled
802.11d State = Enabled
Force DHCP State = Disabled
Force DHCP Timeout = 10
DHCP Option82:
Status = Disabled
Option82 sub-Option1 = Disabled
Option82 sub-Option2 = Disabled
Option82 sub-Option150 = Disabled
Option82 sub-Option151 = Disabled
Ignore unauthorized client statistic = Disabled
STA Info Extraction State = Enabled
BSS Minrate = Disabled
DTIM period = 3
Directed MC/BC Threshold = 0
Call Admission Control State = Disabled
PMK Cache Timeout= 720 minutes
PMK Cache for Reconnect= Enabled
NAS-ID Type= wlan-bssid
Roaming Acct-Interim-Update= Disabled
PAP Message Authenticator = Enabled
Send EAP-Failure = Disabled
L2/MAC = No ACLS
L3/L4/IP Address = No ACLS
L3/L4/IPv6 Address = No ACLS
Precedence = Default
Proxy ARP = Disabled
Device Policy = No ACLS
Vlan Pool = No Pools
Role based Access Control Policy = Disabled
SmartRoam = Enabled Roam-factor = 1
Allow List = No ACLS
URL Filtering = Disabled
Application Recognition & Control = Disabled
Apply ARC Policy = NO POLICY
WIFICalling Enabled= Enabled
WIFICalling Profile= 1
Client Flow Data Logging = Disabled
Wlan Bind = 5g
Client Connection Data = Disabled
Transient Client Management = Disabled
80211w-pmf = Disabled
