Do i need a ZoneDirector for Wireless Roaming?

[marco_eichstet1]

Hi,

Do i need a ZoneDirector for Wireless Roaming?
One of my Customers need a Wireless Network for his Warehouse. There will be about 15 to 20 Wireless Barcode Scanner. The Scanner supports 802.11b/g/n.

I read there is no need for a ZoneDirector for Layer 2 Roaming because this is implemented in the 802.11 Protocoll. Is this true?

Please clarify.

Thanks.

Kind Regards
Marco

[john_d]

Correct and correct. Modern iOS devices are publicly stated to support it: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202628. I'm sure other devices do as well, but it's hard to find solid evidence.

One thing nice about 802.11r FT is that the handoff from AP to AP is virtually instantaneous and you can even carry a VOIP call while walking from AP to AP.

[nick_wollman]

Well we just invested in a ruckus system and that ft transition was one big reason why. Trouble is, the "management" like to make sure the system actually works before throwing lots of money at it so we bought older aps off of eBay that might turn out to not even support it. Oh well.

Can you explain a bit what the channelization feature is for and what it has to do with a client switching between aps steadily? What is the problem if a client steadily disconnects from his ap and roams out to a neighbor but comes right back to his own almost immediately? What would cause an ap to lose clients if no others in the system have any problems?

[john_d]

Channelization? You mean 20/40/80 MHz, or something else? It's not really for optimizing client switching per se. A client steadily disconnecting and reconnecting between AP's is not really something the AP's can control. If a client decides it wants to disconnect there's nothing an AP can do to disagree. That is an issue you'll have to debug from the client side.

OTOH, the ZoneDirector logs can make it sound like a client voluntarily disconnected when in reality what happened is that the AP switched channels (e.g. ChannelFly) or the AP forced the client to disconnect (SmartRoam).

Do you mean ChannelFly by any chance?

[max_o_driscoll]

RE: 7962s. APs that are not supported/EOF will have an upper firmware limit. So you could end up in a situation where you can upgrade the ZD but not all the APs...need to be careful.
If this doesn't apply right now it might hit on the next firmware upgrade cycle.

If the ZD cannot upgrade the firmware on the AP then those APs will not join and be configurable from the ZD. Ooops.

[mitchell_axtell]

The log settings changed in more recent firmware to show warning and critical events only, but it's easy to change this.  Under Configure > System > Log Settings, click the "Show More" option and save.  That will show the user roaming and other entries.