Unleashed Band Balancing tuning

[jason_pearcy]

I have two Unleashed R600's and all of my devices but two cameras have 5ghz radios in them but 90% of my devices are connecting to the 2.4ghz radios in the R600s. Even within 10 feet and clear line of sight my devices do not connect to 5ghz without me forcing the device to use 5ghz only. Any ideas?

[michael_brado]

From KBA-2338: What is band balancing and how can I configure it,
the default number of clients on 2.4G must exceed 10, before *any* might get steered
(if they meet the other criteria to get balanced to 5G).

4. wlan-band-bal-minsta-thresh
Stores the value of max number of associated clients in an AP after which the band balancing will try to distribute the clients among the radios. 
def is 10

https://support.ruckuswireless.com/answers/000002338

How many total clients do you have in your environment, and do you exceed 10+ on 2.4G of
either AP now?

[mike_kuly]

Besides the 10 client limit before balancing as Mike Brado stated you can set the load balancing via the "Extended Service" Tab. Click on "Radio control" and then select the band balancing tab. There you can set the percentage of clients that you want to force to the other band. Default is 25% but you can change that number all the way down to 1% to influence clients.

And that is the critical term, "influence". Clients determine which band they will join. We influence the clients to try another band by first ignoring the first few 2.4 radio requests. Most clients will then try the 5G band and we will let them in. If the client wants to only join a 2.4 band radio there is no way to stop it besides turning off the 2.4 radio.

I hope this helps.

[john_d]

Since these sound like statically positioned devices, it might help to use a 5GHZ-only SSID or something like that to force it to what you feel is the best AP/band.

But yeah, I've found that various internet-of-things type devices with low-cost wifi solutions to be the least tolerant of band steering, SmartRoam, and similar infrastructure-mediated techniques to coerce clients into making better decisions.

I didn't recall from my little time with Unleashed whether it currently supports ZD level flexibility for creating SSIDS on a particular band or on a particular AP.

[michael_brado]

Band specific (2.4 or 5G) SSIDs are not available in Unleashed (yet), but was the first reported Field Request submitted to Product Marketing.