Gracefully shut down APs ?

[jelle_alten_606]

Is there a setting in the ZoneDirector to tell an AP to move all clients to neighbor APs?
I would like to shut one AP down, but without interrupting the clients where possible.

If not, I could turn the radio of that AP to low, hoping the clients will jump to other APs, but that sounds a bit funny.

[jelle_alten_606]

That sound like "gracefully". Nice.

[primoz_marinsek]

Hmm, I take it back somewhat.

I don't know how it will behave in your scenario, but 2 seconds isn't short. I saw that my AP was answering to directed and broadcast probe requests in that time. After 1,2s it actually authenticated one client again and after 1,5s it sent a probe response and retried it like crazy. After that it answered some probe request again, put out some beacons and that lasted for almost 8s.

The problem might be that clients might think they can connect to the AP, however they will be denied each time. Maybe try just unplugging it 🙂

[primoz_marinsek]

Maybe someone from Ruckus can explain the intended behavior.

[marcus_burton]

The problem is that once clients are associated to an AP, there is no widely supported way of moving clients to another AP--the APs don't have control over this decision. We can always send disassociations, but this is not graceful and would be the same as just unplugging the AP. 802.11v offers a mechanism to solve this problem, but clients today are not supporting it.

My only alternate suggestion would be to reduce the tx power on that AP that needs rebooting. If you reduce it to minimum, it might prompt some associated clients to seek a better AP and roam--of course, no guarantees here because client roaming is unpredictable and even at minimum tx power, the clients still might not be motivated enough.

[jelle_alten_606]

Thanks!