Wireless Access

I just saw this shared on the Educause wireless list, and though it might be of some use here:

 

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT6463

 

The part I found most interesting was that the devices will use different RSSI thresholds for roaming based on whether or not it is actively transmitting data.  It specifically calls out siting idle in someone's pocket as a scenario where it would be less likely to roam as compared with actively browsing the web.  This sounds to me like there's a good chance that upon taking your iPhone out and starting to use it, the first thing it will immediately do is roam to another AP.  Not a very user friendly design choice, in my opinion.

 

I like this part:

 

"Understanding the selection criteria of iOS allows administrators to reevaluate their current wireless design to make sure it provides the expected and required performance to support real-time services such as voice or video."

 

Translation: We're not going to fix our stuff to survive out there in the wild, we expect the wild to adapt to us.

 

 

I refer to this kind of thing as "engineering for the in-basement experience."

They went from refusing to acknowledge/fix problems to publicly showcasing the problem, shoving it at IT and forcing them to work around it. I guess we'll never see any forward progress with them.

 

It'll end up biting them, though.  We aren't formally doing voice yet.  When we start to, there is likely to be a *long* period of time where competitor's devices that roam properly perform more reliably than Apple's before we get everything tweaked right for the best balance for a mixed BYOD client base, and all during that period of time iOS users will be watching users of other devices yakking away without a care in the world.