Wireless Roaming

[Ian_Broadway]

Hello,

I'm trying to understand wireless roaming a bit better.

I believe I may have read somewhere that you can't seamlessly roam between different radios and that this would force a client disassociation?

Is this correct? if so would it be the same for different radios on the same AP?

or are both examples wrong?

I can't seem to find anything related to this behaviour which is why I'm questioning it.

I'm fairly certain I've seen connection times restart when a device has channel hopped hence the query.

Thanks
Ian

[joshhunter]

Hi Ian, I've just opened a topic as I'm having roaming issues. That said, you should be able to roam seamlessly. However this depends on a number of factors, is this an Intra-Controller Roam or Inter-Controller Roam? If you roaming between controllers, does the client keep the same IP (L2) or is the client roaming is a new subnet (L3). If so then Mobility needs configuring. If not then you should be okay with Fast-Failover/Session Availability. Other factors that will dictate roam time includes the type of SSID WLAN configured, is there a RADUS server involved? This will add more of a delay over an Open or WPA2 SSID.

Another thing to consider is using all of the 5GHz channels, the DFS channels can force a client to drop if a RADAR is detected. Additionally some clients don't support all of the 5GHz channels.

Make sure you client drivers are up-to date that can help.