Does anyone have experience with the “Assisted roaming” option?
We have a Balance 310 5G router, and we are starting to work in WiFi for small-medium size events. I have noticed that the clients often stay connected to an AP that is far away, with RSSI values of around -75 / -80 dB
I want to make those clients roam faster. Let’s say at -67 dB. Could “Assisted roaming” help in that?
There’s another option called “Client Signal Strength Threshold”.
Perhaps this will give one viewpoint? In brief, I think you are on the right track. “Assisted roaming” makes dumb client behavior a little bit smarter. And setting a threshold value and, circumstances permitting, forcing disconnects may help.
Frankly, before messing around with settings like that I’d be more inclined to look at the relative TX powers being used by the APs as to why the devices are behaving like this.
Let’s be clear, there is no such thing as “assisted roaming” or anything like that in 802.11 - the client devices, not the infrastructure decide when and how they will roam, all the infrastructure can do is encourage this, but ultimately setting things like “low signal cutoff” and similar to aggressive values are just pulling the carpet out from under the devices feet.
You’re ultimately not making the device “roam” in the way you think, but essentially drop its connection likely by means of sending a de-auth message to it and hoping that it will reconnect somewhere better.
This is universally true of all wireless vendors, many have features for this kind of thing and they all do it in mostly similar ways, but the best solution is getting the RF design in the beginning implemented in a way that devices will behave as expected or intended on.
@WillJones’ point regarding the value of looking at power levels is well taken. We’ve always had to do that. Both power levels and positioning are really important, although note that we have direct control over only half of the wi-fi power budget. However, I’ll also stick with what I said. We’ve encountered no issues with the newer versions of router FW set to “encourage” roaming. And, we are thankful it’s there.
I am not sure what the “sweet spot” is. Looking at four systems we set up rather carefully, I see “client signal thresholds” settings ranging from -61 to -71dBm. (One may note that we’re measuring power levels, in this case decibels referenced to a milliwatt, not the differences in levels which we’d express in dB.) It really makes a difference how far the APs are apart, what attenuates the signal in the wi-fi environment, how much overlap there is, and a ton of other variables.
I’ll mention that one way we test to establish a SIP call from a phone and walk-test. This method does a better job – for us – of finding “drops” than casual browsing, speed tests, etc. (If SpeedFusion or PepVPN is in use we either disable it for the tests or set the buffer parameters very low.)
Yes there are ways that APs can help a client roam more smoothly, 802.11k, 802.11v, and 802.11r all assist the client in understanding the AP topology and smoothly moving between multiple APs.