Ruckus roaming weirdness

[FishCustard]

Here's an odd one for you. To set the scene, we've got a Ruckus wireless system w/a ZoneDirector 3000 in place.

 

We have a situation in that the domain-joined laptops in one particular room are not logging in properly (>15 min login times, not mapping drives, etc.). We've tried all sorts of things to get it to work, but the consistent oddity is that they insist on roaming between APs, as opposed to sticking with the one right next to them in the room!

 

They'll roam out and back all within around 10 seconds, and sometimes settle on one several rooms away! We've replaced the AP itself with no effect.

 

Any ideas? I know it's a bit of an open question, feel free to quiz me on what we've tried/aspects of the setup.

[Admiral208]

Is the port the ap is plugged into correctly configured? Could it be in a wrong vlan?

[SYNACK]

What is the roaming aggressiveness set to in the wireless driver on the laptop, wind it up or down depending on your need. A bad client driver can negate even the best managed wireless system.

[FishCustard]

Is the port the ap is plugged into correctly configured? Could it be in a wrong vlan?

 

We tried several ports around the room, checked the patching the other end was correct, etc. The AP registers with the controller fine.

 

 

@SYNACK - I believe we did check that, but can't say 100% as I didn't personally do it. I will check that myself tomorrow, as well as swapping laptop types and/or WLAN cards to help eliminate a client issue.

[White_Fi]

Hi Guys,

 

Roaming can be one of the biggest headaches in WiFi.. Why.... Until 802.11v is implemented in end devices all clients decisions are down the the client and the client alone.

Different vendors implement different variables and variable readings to trigger a roam such as: RSSI, SnR, Data Rates etc.

 

There are things you can do to make an AP look more or less attractive to a client to enforce (or not) a roam.

 

SYNAK is correct.. get stable drivers (not always the latest) on the devices and play with the roaming aggressiveness (not available on all drivers).

After that use a simple tool such as inSSider (metageek.net) to look at what the RSSI is from the two APs in the clients location.

 

If the client is seeing two APs at lets say -65db and aggressively roaming it would be advisable to re-locate on of the APs to create more attenuation from the AP to the client (reduce the signal strength)

It is not always advisable to just lower the Tx Power.... When you reduce the APs Tx Power you are actually reducing the Max Data Rate the AP can support with the client and not just decreasing the coverage space.