High latency on Apple devices vs. Windows

[btt]

New to Ruckus and working on a deployment for a hotel/resort property. We've gotten reports of connectivity issues with the POS system that runs on iPads carried around by the servers. I did some digging and I noticed high latency spikes when pinging the iPads. Pings will sit below 10ms for maybe 10 pings, then bounce up anywhere between 50-250ms for another 10 pings or so, then come back down, with some variations. I'm able to reproduce this issue with Apple laptops as well. We've done a site survey, signal and SNR values all look good. What's odd is on Windows devices I'm not able to reproduce the issue. A windows devices connected to the same WLAN on the same AP as a Mac device will maintain low latency, while a Mac or iPad will spike. 

I have a case open with support, but I wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions/tips on things that can be done from a config standpoint to try and make Apple devices happier. I'm running the latest version of the vSZ and using R720s and T710 omnis. Thanks. 

[lou_kalis]

I have seen something similar where a MacBook or ios device will be between two ap's and sometimes grab the closest one while the person passes it and then not roam to the next closest ap if the 1st one you passed is still holding a +70 or so db value.  I have also reported to this support who is aware and actively investigating.  Perhaps this is also your issue?  We are cloud-managed and leveraging R600's internally and T301S's externally.

[btt]

That could be related. The area of the property where we're focusing our troubleshooting efforts had two APs that clients could roam between. We've temporarily disabled one to force all clients on to one AP and we're still seeing the issue. Have you come up with any workarounds or tweaks that have helped your situation?

[itdept_head_me]

try taking a look at the  OSX battery/ power saving settings:

system preferenes->energy saver
try setting it all to "max" no sleep /no power save
"wake" for network access.
it "*might" be power save sleep, being woken by "wake for network access"


I was having such issues back in 2014, but now I see >150Mb/s from ruckus R500's to mac airs.
and switching between wifi points ... is spot on.... no flip flop.

but what i HAVE seen.. is multiple ssid's screwing things up, where the macs
"flip-flop" between other  SSID's that have stronger signals.

A situation can arise where it sees  another AP, sees the "wrong ssid" first then flips ssid even though its the same network.. running differnt ssid's, ESP. if there are 3rd party ssid's visible,  from what i have seen it looks like the apple wifi logic (in china we see hundreds if not thousands of SSID's where idiots have thrown on "burners")

[lou_kalis]

I do not have a work around yet.

While I see why those power savings might help, I'm in the same situation at BTT. We both have public customers accessing our "free" wireless. We can't be available to help everyone who wanders in at any time to make those setting changes.

Apple still insists on setting their own standards and forcing manufacturers to react to their products. This costs companies a lot of time and money to focus on apple alone. We had similar issues with Extreme Wireless prior pertaining to some products.

I have faith that the Ruckus dev team will solve this.

Please let us know when support solves the issue or offers a controller/ap update.

I hope this is solved quickly for you.