More APs with single ­SSID

[Jouni Malinen]

On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 01:35:39PM +0100, Milan Kr?m?? wrote:
> Yes, I have forgotten to emphasize that it is primarily STA's problem
> and that I would like to discuss how to mitigate it from AP's point of
> view, because you usually have not enough control over STAs: we
> operate AP's that should work with usual STA implementations. We
> observed Android phones behave slightly better than brand (HP etc.)
> notebooks (mostly Intel radios)...

Generally, this should really be solved at the STA, but as far as the
question of whether the AP side can somehow help with the issue you are
seeing is concerned, there is not really a good mechanism available with
already deployed devices. IEEE 802.11v added BSS Transition Management
functionality which could potentially help with AP requesting the
station to roam. However, that would require station changes and the
station could as well be made to roam more easily on its own in such
case..

If the network side knows that the station would see another AP with
better signal strength (which is difficult unless the STA is reporting
such information), a Deauthentication or Disassociation frame could be
sent to force the STA to do something. However, this comes at a price of
disconnection (even if only a brief one) and some STAs could end up
trying to return to the old AP anyway..

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA