How to achieve Band steering on ZD1200?

[SmallPotato]

Hi all,

I have a question that how can we push users connecting to 5Ghz first but not 2.4 radio? 

I just reviewed other brands like Aruba / Aerohive, they just have a feature named Band steering to achieve this.

Can Ruckus do well the same as well?

I also find that Ruckus supports Band balancing for an SSID. - I wonder what if I configure only 1% of users connecting to 2.4.

Then let says we have 100 devices that only support 2.4 Radio and connect to this SSID. What is the result of the Ruckus Band balancing for this case?

Thanks.

[sanjay_kumar · Accepted solution]

@SmallPotato 

When you enable Band Balancing, it attempts to balance the client load on radios by distributing clients between the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios. This feature is disabled by default. To balance the number of clients connecting to the two radios on an AP, the AP encourages dual-band clients to connect to the 5 GHz band when the configured percentage threshold is reached.

Under the "Percent of clients on 2.4 GHz radio" the value in the % field denotes the threshold above which dual-band clients will be encouraged to connect to the 5 GHz radio rather than the 2.4 GHz radio.

Please take a look on the below article which explains more about this feature.

https://support.ruckuswireless.com/articles/000002508

Regards,

Sanjay Kumar

[SmallPotato]

@sanjay_kumar 

WOW, I even don't know this way to resolve the issue.

But then a question:

Based on that KB, am I going to set the Value one by one for each AP!?
 "set band-steering  all  20 "

That is terrible. Any GUI way to achieve the same config to messly deploy?

Resolution

APs that have band steering/balancing enabled can use the latest received probes to set threshold and RSSI (SNR) values per STA MAC as a basis for steering a STA to a specific band for primary association.

Once associated to an AP, the STA is no longer part of the balancing and must re-associate in order to be part of the table used to track the associated MACs.

Band steering typically operates using an RSSI threshold of about 20.
If a WLAN has RSSI threshold set to zero, then band steering is disabled on that WLAN and the station table is not updated when probe requests are received on that WLAN.

On the opposite extreme, an RSSI threshold of 1 forces all dual-band clients to 5 GHz.
 
Settings
The RSSI (SNR) thresholds are controlled by the following CLI commands at the AP:
rkscli:  get band-steering  <wlan-name>
rkscli:  set band-steering  <wlan-name>  <rssi-value>
rkscli:  set band-steering  all  <rssi-value>

[Vineet_nejwala]

@SmallPotato

You can push the command from ZD debug to all connected AP's using below example :

Ruckus (Debug)# remote_ap_cli -A "set band-steering  <wlan-name>"

https://support.ruckuswireless.com/articles/000005578

Best Regards

Vineet

[SmallPotato]

@vineet_nejawala 

@sanjay_kumar 

Hey, why the CLI is not working with my APs?

ruckus# debug
You have all rights in this mode.
ruckus(debug)# remote_ap_cli -A get band-steering
---- Command 'rkscli -c "get band-steering "' executed at dc:ae:eb:______
Command is not recognized: get band-steering
---- Command 'rkscli -c "get band-steering "' executed at dc:ae:eb:______
Command is not recognized: get band-steering
---- Command 'rkscli -c "get band-steering "' executed at dc:ae:eb:______
Command is not recognized: get band-steering
---- Command 'rkscli -c "get band-steering "' executed at dc:ae:eb:______
Command is not recognized: get band-steering
remote_ap_cli -A get band-steering
ruckus(debug)#