Client Roaming concerns

[mohler@graceland.edu]

We are currently ecountering issues with our deployment of 103H access points we are running dhcp from our controller and are encountering issues with our clients having to reauthenticate each time they roam. I pulled statistics and found that 410 of our 1539 clients do not support 802.11v is this a concern when expecting clients to roam seemlessly. The SSID is set to open. I also have tuned our access points to reduce our changes in tx levels.  

[sadams]

802.11v may not be the primary concern,  11v  is really a "suggestion" to a supporting client exhibiting "sticky" behavior. From the description we're focused on more basic roaming configuration.

It sounds like you've set a good roaming environment, if your clients are departing each AP at a good SNR, let's say greater than 20 SNR, excellent, onto the authentication portion.

Mechanisms like Opportunistic Key Caching may be more interesting when looking at basic roaming and in particular re-authentication.

A couple of great references, the latter also discusses 802.11r.

https://community.arubanetworks.com/aruba/attachments/aruba/115/1097/1/Aruba+OKC+Implementation.pdf

http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Controller-Based-WLANs/What-is-Fast-BSS-Transition-IEEE-802-11r-standard-and-what-is/ta-p/185256

I'd take a look, ensure OKC, and validate PMKID are enabled, then watch the controller "show auth buf" to see what clients use these mechanisms and only perform the abbreviated re-authentication at each roam.

The ArubaOS User Guide "Configuring 802.1X Authentication" has additional details.