Are most devices smart enough to connect to the strongest AP w/ multiple APs, same SSID?

[stevech]

Samsung's Andriod phones are good enough so that they dominate that space.
Samsung is a giant conglomerate as we know Large appliances, electronics, LCD OEM, etc.
They epitomize Japan, Inc. where first to market seems to be reserved for only Sony.
Second to market is arguable most often the best path.

 

[htismaqe]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Samsung like THE OEM in the LCD space? I wanna say Samsung makes screens for several of the "discount" LCD/LED TV brands...

 

[htismaqe]

And yes, Samsung phones dominate the Android space. Personally, I find their version of Android to be bloated. So many features nobody really needs and so many more that are really only valuable if you have Samsung throughout your A/V system and home.

 

[sfx2000]

And yes, Samsung phones dominate the Android space. Personally, I find their version of Android to be bloated. So many features nobody really needs and so many more that are really only valuable if you have Samsung throughout your A/V system and home.

I call it SAMDroid as opposed to Android - like I said earlier, they do fine HW, leveraging on the ideas of others perhaps...

The Samsung GS4 was their last/best/good device... remains to be seen if their iPhone6 clone does well, so far, it's kind of like the GS5 as a performer - they get some decent units sold at a discount price - watch the ad for a BOGO when the carriers decide to clear inventory on a share plan...

Right now I can get a GS5 for $0.99 trade in on a pre-paid plan... if that ain't channel stuffing and blowing out inventory, I don't know what is...

(Samsung, I'll concede, does do some things right - their 3-D V-NAND stuff in SSD space is pretty impressive, and there, they're well ahead of others - too bad they can't write firmware for their SSD's that don't unexpectedly cause data loss when using TRIM commands..., oh well, I've got two of their SSD's in my collection of Macs, good performers, but now I don't trust them).

BTW - if you want a really good Android device, and don't want to pay the premium for Nexus - look at the 2014/2015 Moto releases - close to the Google experience with not so much crapware)

 

[stevech]

Motorola was a great company. Way back.
Now, their a bunch of overpaid resellers. No Moto for me.
My current phone is 3 yr. old HTC One. has been very good.

yeah, I've bought 4 or so Samsung SSDs.
Cost more. But for some reason, I stick with them.
I don't skimp on disk drives - I try to buy the best or nearly so.
Kind of like that too, with shoes.

 

[Nonprofit]

I have never seen a client device do this well. My biggest wireless frustration and pet peeve... by far.

I ran UniFi Zero Handoff for a little while, and it was the closest to acceptable I have come. Maybe my expectations for roaming are too high. iDevices are the worst for me. I often have to turn the wireless on my iPhone off and then back on when walking around my house to force it to change to the closer AP.

 

[htismaqe]

I find it crazy that we have so many differing experiences with the same basic set of devices. Very interesting to say the least.

 

[Nonprofit]

I find it crazy that we have so many differing experiences with the same basic set of devices. Very interesting to say the least.

I think that can probably be explained in large part by expectations. I've had friends over to my house with their iPhones/iPads and as they walk around their house and it takes their devices several minutes to jump from one AP to another... they think nothing of it. A few have even commented on how nice it is, how seamless, and better than their homes.

I, on the other hand, do not consider my phone spinning for several minutes as it tries to reconnect to whatever webpage or service I was trying to use to be seamless. I consider it disruptive.

I have the same experience at the large offices I manage. Some employees (most, I might even say) don't notice or don't care when their devices get hung up trying to figure things out as they walk around. But a few - usually tech staff, or people who really rely on services on their mobile devices - complain about it all the time.

But taking expectations out of the equation, it is fairly easy to demonstrate the problem with a simple ping test. I've done this for clients in the past. Set up a wired machine to do a constant ping to a mobile device. Then watched that ping as the mobile device is walked around the office. This is a great demonstration for clients who understand things better visually - they get to see the disconnects happening and how long it takes for the ping to come back up, and it helps them better understand it is the client device, and not the APs I just installed.

 

[htismaqe]

I don't think it does have anything to do with expectations. I'm getting wildly different results than you.

I've done ping tests. I barely lose any packets. It doesn't even take SECONDS, let alone minutes, for my iPhone 6 to change over.

The only time it takes any time at all for my devices to switch is if the SSID is different. When they're the same, it works wonderfully.

 

[Nonprofit]

It might not be expectations in your case. There are outliers and exceptions to everything. You might have a particularly awesome environment or phone. But I would be willing to bet that if we walked into 10 multi-ap/single SSID setups and ran that ping test almost all of them would be closer to what I describe. And I am not a betting man. I say this only because I've done it with dozens and dozens of client's offices/homes.

I wish I had your experience, I'm extremely jealous.