Smart-Roam sticky client control
Summary
When to use Smartroam feature on Zone DirectorQuestion
When should I use SmartRoam?Customer Environment
ZD controlled APs, Apple or other Sticky clients, high density, need for load balancing Stand Alone APs running SW version 9.8.2 or higherRoot Cause
Some clients do not roam even if they are physically moved to a new location. Not all clients have roaming aggressiveness setting to fine tune roaming. Apple devices are reported to cling to the AP they first learn an SSID on.Troubleshooting Steps
Usually triggered by client reports of not roaming, troubleshoot from ZD Administer/Diagnostics and enable Client Association and 802.11 components, then enter that client MAC in the focus box.Collect ZD debug soon after the client reports not roaming or disconnect/reconnect, and analyze Log.txt from collected ZD debug .zip file. Determine client behavior from log msgs, correlated to reported behavior.
Background:
In a multi-AP environment, a client will always be looking for the best AP to connect to. It will remain connected to its current AP and roam to an adjacent AP once the signal level falls below a certain threshold. This behavior ensures best possible performance at all times.
To achieve this, a client must be doing background scanning to learn about its environment. Frequency of this background scan can determine the roaming behavior. Certain clients such as Windows clients allow roaming aggressiveness to be tweaked. "High" setting will make the client to perform background scanning more often to learn about available APs to connect. While the "Low" setting will make the client to do less frequent scanning. This setting can be found under the wireless adapter properties.
Unfortunately this tweaking is not readily available on all client types. For example, various smartphones and Apple clients do not provide this setting to encourage roaming.
For these type of clients, it is obvious to look towards infrastructure for help. Ruckus has added firmware support to disconnect a client if its signal falls below user definable threshold. This feature is called SmartRoam. With this feature there will be an explicit disassociate message to kick-off the client.
Resolution
Here is how to set this up from the ZD CLI:This is a per-SSID setting as illustrated above. "smart-roam" parameter takes values from 1 to 10.
These are called roam factor, and they map to a RSSI value in dB as per the list below:
There will be an explicit disconnect event under the ZD logs in case this is triggered.
Here is an example:
2013/10/08 09:04:23 Low testuser User[testuser] disconnected by admin from WLAN[captivep] at AP[24:c9:a1:28:f0:80]
To disable SmartRoam, enter a ZD CLI config mode, per WLAN "no smart-roam" command.
For Stand Alone AP setting:
From CLI:
get wlanlist
X is the wlan to set, check the SSID to verify the right wlan is set.
get roam_factor wlanX
set roam_factor wlanX 3
reboot
Note:
Here is an example:
2013/10/08 09:04:23 Low testuser User[testuser] disconnected by admin from WLAN[captivep] at AP[24:c9:a1:28:f0:80]
To disable SmartRoam, enter a ZD CLI config mode, per WLAN "no smart-roam" command.
For Stand Alone AP setting:
From CLI:
get wlanlist
X is the wlan to set, check the SSID to verify the right wlan is set.
get roam_factor wlanX
set roam_factor wlanX 3
reboot
Note:
- In order to avoid this we recommend testing first with a very conservative setting like a roam factor of 2 or 3
- Please review roaming factor table accordingly and determine the level suitable for your WLAN enviornment
- Ruckus suggest to start with a conservative value such as 2 or 3 and adjust accordingly
- Due to some manufacturer specific client behavior, values over 5 are not recommended.
Article Number:
000002277
Updated:
August 16, 2020 08:04 PM (over 2 years ago)
Tags:
Performance, Configuration, Troubleshooting, Known Issues and Workarounds, ZoneDirector, ZoneFlex Indoor, ZoneFlex Outdoor
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55
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