Wireless Access

Hello,

I am having a problem with some RF handheld units in our warehouse.  They are older units and we've been playing around with 1 Mbps and Auto bitrates (configured on the device).  A bitrate of 1 Mbps seems to give us more reliability in terms of less packet loss, however when the bitrate is set to 1 Mbps the device fails to roam to another access point. 

We can successfully associate and connect to the AP in our office, however once we go out into the warehouse it's not long until we are out of range and disconnect completely.  Changing the device's bitrate to 'auto' immediately reconnects and allows it to roam freely.  When set to auto, the unit will operate at 5.5 or 11 Mbps.

The only difference is that the AP in the office is an AP-135 and the AP's in the warehouse are AP-205's, with the profiles being the same.  The ARM settings and SSID bitrate settings are all default.  This is a controller based setup.

I'm not a wireless expert by any means so I ask, can bitrate affect a device's ability to roam and associate?  Why does a lower bitrate result in less packet loss?

Thank you.

I am going to answer your  two questions in general:

You need higher signal strength to maintain higher bitrates.  If you allow a higher bitrate, the client could fail and then fall back to the lower bit rate for reliability.  Lower bitrates are inherently more reliabile because they require less signal strength.

Why would a device hard coded at 1 Mbps not roam properly to another AP?  When setting it back to auto works fine.

The two reasons why most clients do not roam properly:

- The power of the AP radio is too high

- The power of the AP radio is too low

EDIT:

Two other reasons:

- Your coverage is poor

- you have too much coverage

If this is a Warehouse, you should probably get a professional to determine which is your issue.  Warehouses are very complicated Rf environments.