Roaming issues

[Laura]

C5210 controllers with 9.21.10.5 and 3605/3610 APs. Does anyone else in a school district setting have roaming issues and ways to improve it? We have principals that use iObservation tool on their Macbooks and roam to different classrooms. They say they can connect, get kicked off, can't get back on, get dropped...Is there such a thing as seamless roaming? I tell them to reboot machine and turn wifi on/off.

[Rich_Upshaw]

That looks good for power levels on the surface. What do the advanced setting look like? How do the rest of them look, similar? Are your 2.4 radios turned on for every access point or have you limited that down?
I'm assuming your classrooms are pretty normal sized so even if your AP placement isn't perfect, given the amount of AP's you have, it sounds like there is a lot of flexibility to tune your radios the way you want them to.

Back to your cell size question: Given that you have an AP in the halls and in every classroom, you want to get it as small as you possibly can. You most likely have a lot of bleed-over into adjacent rooms.

[Laura]

almost every classroom and in the halls. We don't have a professional install of the devices. There were just plugged in, wherever I could find a working data drop. I'm sure some of the issue is AP placement.

[Rich_Upshaw]

Yes, and that's the point. If you're having roaming issues, the bottom line is that the signal strength that your client is receiving is still strong enough to hang onto the AP it's associated with, even if it's down the hall.
Less is more here.
How far are your AP's spaced apart?
What is your max power level set to on your AP's? Particularly your 2.4 radio?

[Laura]

But if I up it to 12, won't the cell size get smaller, and the users will need to be closer to the APs.

[Rich_Upshaw]

Think of the client being attached to the AP like a rubber band. Go too far away and the rubber band will break however it gets weaker as you go further away.
Something I just thought of too, what is your minimum basic rate set at on your ap's? 6mbps? if so, it may help to up it to 12mbps.