Best Practice configs for a High Density Deployment?
When using Ruckus APs in a High Density enviroment, some clients refuse to roam when they should and others roam excessively.
What (if anything) would be better than the following config for avoiding roaming issues in a high AP density environment?
..assuming a non-encrypted guest network...
Create 2 WLANs:
wlan public50
ssid public50
description "public 5Ghz SSID"
no band-balancing
no load-balancing
vlan 111
ofdm-only
bss-minrate 24
smart-roam 2
exit
wlan public24
ssid public24
description "public 2.4Ghz SSID"
vlan 111
no band-balancing
no load-balancing
ofdm-only
bss-minrate 12
smart-roam 1
exit
Create 2 WLAN groups:
wlan-group public24
wlan public24
exit
wlan-group public50
wlan public50
exit
Then assign the WLAN groups to the appropriate radio of each AP.
Reasoning:
1) Turn off band-balancing a.k.a. band-steering to prevent an AP from accidentially pushing a 2.4Ghz client to a further-away 2.4Ghz radio instead of the intended local 5Ghz radio.
2) set ofdm-only to prevent old "B-only" clients from dropping the AP to "B-only" mode.
3) set bss-minrate to prevent clients from going to lower speeds. (and encourage them to roam to a nearer AP on their own)
4) set smart-roam (not recommended by Ruckus?) to kick clients off an AP when the AP sees a very poor signal from the client. (and "force" a client to roam)
5) Use different SSIDs for the 2.4Ghz radios vs the 5Ghz radios.
Even though I've already turned off band-steering and load-balancing, the clients may still decide to jump back+forth between 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz radios.
Using a different SSID for each band makes a client less likely to decide to roam between bands.
This still leaves the possibility for 2.4Ghz clients to decide to excessively jump between 2.4Ghz radios.
If you need a way to prevent that kind of roaming, you could take the additional step of assigning a unique SSID/WLAN to each radio on each AP.
If your environment doesn't suffer from excessive roaming, you can add a single "public" SSID that exists on all radios.
End users would then be able to choose the SSID that works best for them.
If anyone has a better solution, please let me know.