Wireless Access

I have trouble connecting several ipad air (latest) with ios8 to our wireless connection.<br>The profile and configuration for this setup are all default settings.<br>But when I disable "band steering" feature in VAP, all ipad are able to connect successfully.<br>Does anybody ever having this problem before?<br>And if I have to disable the band steering, is there any other way to force client to radio a.<br><br><br>-slickers-<br>

I have never had that issue, however if your controller supports 6.3.x you can use client match which band steers and much more. Also be sure you're on the latest patch of iOS as iOS 8 still is a bit broken on the wireless side. See if the same thing happens with an iOS 7 device.

Yopi

what version of AOS are you using ? There are reports of ios8 disliking bandsteering around.

regards

-jeff

The os is 6.1.3.8. I already told my customer to update their controller, but is it resolved this problem?
For now, they accept this "workarround", but just asking, is there any other way to achieve "band steering" without band steering feature.


Thanks

hi Yopi

 

Is client match on or off ?

 

if client match is on, it's using CM bandsteer, slightly different behaviour than legacy bandsteering, in so far as it's aware of the device type. I recall hearing that we may have made a change to CM for iOS8, I need to search for it now.

 

one way you can help devices to bandsteer themselves, is to make sure that the arm min/max power is set to make 5ghz always strong.

 

What is the current ARM min/max power and is the 11g radio profile using a different ARM profile than the 11a radio profile ?

 

-jeff

 

Hi jeff..
The os 6.1.3.8, don't have CM yet.
I will suggest them to update the controller asap.
The arm profile is still using default profile.

Will try your suggestion in my labs, and report the result here.
Please do tell when you found the update for CM, as you mentioned before.


Thank you.
-yopi-

Yopi

ah, sorry i misread that as 6.3.1.8.... Client match does tend to handle iOS devices a little better than the older bandsteering, you can test in your lab and see.

 

If you have high or medium density of APs, then you can try the following which is trying to achieve two things:

 

1. when in the usual range of the AP, the 5GHz signal is always strongest by a decent margin

 

2. tx power between APs is more even - this will help with sticky clients and roaming (not related to your issue specifically, but it will help)

 

> create two new ARM profiles, call one of them arm-g and one arm-a

> ensure the max tx power for the 11g arm profile is less than the min tx power for 11a arm profile, preferably by 3dB at least

> enure the difference between min and max tx power is not more than 6dB

 

Example:

11g min-tx-power 12 , max-tx-power 18

11a min-tx-power 21 , max-tx-power 127

 

** Warning ** these are just example values and need to be fine tuned a bit depending on the environment, if there are clients that are on the coverage edge and you go and reduce 2.4ghz max tx power, then this will cause them issues.

 

*edit* this also assumes you have a device population that is predominantly 5ghz capable

 

regards

-jeff