Wireless Access

Hello community,

Recently, I was at a customer's site for roaming problems with Zebra handheld scanners on a separate SSID. Despite having adequate signal coverage and overlap, the wireless connection was interrupted each time when walking through the organization and moving between AP's.

I tuned several settings like; signalstrength, power settings, channels etc, but I could nog get the roaming to become smoothly. Only when I was walking very slow then there were no disconnects!

Eventually I was able to solve the problem by changing the security of the SSID from WPA3 to WPA2. After that, roaming was no longer a problem and the disconnects were gone.

I know WPA3 is an improvement of WPA2 and is more secure, but has anyone seen similar problems?

WPA3 is very new and has not been tested as rigorously as WPA2.  In something like a Zebra scanner that does not get updates as often I would stick to WPA2.  With that said, I would contact Zebra and see if they have heard of the issue so they can provide guidance and troubleshooting tips.

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Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

HPE Design and Deploy Guides: https://community.arubanetworks.com/support/migrated-knowledge-base?attachments=&communitykey=dcc83c62-1a3a-4dd8-94dc-92968ea6fff1&pageindex=0&pagesize=12&search=&sort=most_recent&viewtype=card
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Original Message:
Sent: Jan 24, 2023 04:56 AM
From: jeepee
Subject: Wireless roaming with handheld using WPA2 vs WPA3

Hello community,

Recently, I was at a customer's site for roaming problems with Zebra handheld scanners on a separate SSID. Despite having adequate signal coverage and overlap, the wireless connection was interrupted each time when walking through the organization and moving between AP's.

I tuned several settings like; signalstrength, power settings, channels etc, but I could nog get the roaming to become smoothly. Only when I was walking very slow then there were no disconnects!

Eventually I was able to solve the problem by changing the security of the SSID from WPA3 to WPA2. After that, roaming was no longer a problem and the disconnects were gone.

I know WPA3 is an improvement of WPA2 and is more secure, but has anyone seen similar problems?

Thanks you for your reply!
We are indeed going to contact Zebra to discuss this issue.
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 24, 2023 05:20 AM
From: cjoseph
Subject: Wireless roaming with handheld using WPA2 vs WPA3

WPA3 is very new and has not been tested as rigorously as WPA2.  In something like a Zebra scanner that does not get updates as often I would stick to WPA2.  With that said, I would contact Zebra and see if they have heard of the issue so they can provide guidance and troubleshooting tips.

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

HPE Design and Deploy Guides: https://community.arubanetworks.com/support/migrated-knowledge-base?attachments=&communitykey=dcc83c62-1a3a-4dd8-94dc-92968ea6fff1&pageindex=0&pagesize=12&search=&sort=most_recent&viewtype=card

Original Message:
Sent: Jan 24, 2023 04:56 AM
From: jeepee
Subject: Wireless roaming with handheld using WPA2 vs WPA3

Hello community,

Recently, I was at a customer's site for roaming problems with Zebra handheld scanners on a separate SSID. Despite having adequate signal coverage and overlap, the wireless connection was interrupted each time when walking through the organization and moving between AP's.

I tuned several settings like; signalstrength, power settings, channels etc, but I could nog get the roaming to become smoothly. Only when I was walking very slow then there were no disconnects!

Eventually I was able to solve the problem by changing the security of the SSID from WPA3 to WPA2. After that, roaming was no longer a problem and the disconnects were gone.

I know WPA3 is an improvement of WPA2 and is more secure, but has anyone seen similar problems?