802.11r and Enhanced Roaming

[piero_zanchetta]

Hi I was reading the last section: Can I use both 11r and enhanced roaming?

Know about Enhanced Roaming feature

                             Enhanced Roaming What is the need of this feature? When a client connects to an AP, some of try to stay connected -even when users roam and the wireless signal weakens (below -75 dbm). This client behavior affects overall network performance. Clients who are capable of fast data rate transmissions tend to achieve lower data rates when they go far away from AP. Cambium Solution: Our proprietary Enhanced roaming mechanism keeps monitoring every connected client’…

This means that if I activate 802.11r fast roaming then enhanced roaming will have no effect at all, so e.g. if the client SNR gets smaller than the threshold (e.g. 11 dB with 15 dB threshold) it wouldn’t be disconnected?

or this means that disconnection will not occur only to clients that supports 802.11r standard?

Thanks for the clarification.

BR

Piero

[Kaushik]

Hello Piero,

802.11r is a roaming protocol standard to complete fast transitions when clients are moving between different APs. Enhanced roaming feature is to make sure no clients are sticky and remain connected to one AP even though they have weak RSSI values or SNR threshold.

If you have both enabled, then the enhanced roaming feature will make sure clients are not sticky, and 802.11r will make sure that 802.11r supported clients will roam seamlessly to other nearby Cambium APs.

The 2 are totally independent because if the clients are at a state where it refuses to roam to another AP, then enhanced roaming will disconnect the client so that it can look to move to another AP with stronger signal strength. So in this case once a client is disconnected, roaming does not come in to the picture, since it will be a new association to another AP. And for those 802.11r supported clients that are not sticky and follow the right standards of triggering their own roaming thresholds and try to roam to another AP well within the SNR threshold set for enhanced roaming, then they will follow the 802.11r Fast-Transition protocols to roam to another AP.

Hope the above explanation helps. Please do reach out if you need more clarification.