RamGuy
Senior Member
Greetings fellow forum members!
I'm currently trying to wrap my head around how to get a good wireless roaming solution going using Asus wireless products.
This is mostly for my work location, where we have a complete absent IT-department, but as a Asus retailer we are able to grab ourselves some products in order to try achieving stable wireless throughout our retail shop.
We currently have a Asus RT-N66U running on the first floor, a RT-AC66U on the second and a RT-AC68U in the server room (also second floor).
This provides us with decent enough coverage overall. The RT-N66U provides good 2,4GHz coverage on the first floor, and the RT-AC66U is doing a decent job on the second floor and our lunch-room is getting signal from the RT-AC68U stuck in the server room.
As all walls are made out of thick concrete, getting a signal, especially 5.0GHz // 802.11ac through any of that is next to impossible. The 2.4GHz drops off as well, but it manages to go through 1-2 walls before it dies off completely.
So everything in terms of coverage is working good enough. The problem we are facing is the fact that clients does not roam freely between the points. Not at all.
I have tried the "Roaming Assistant" feature under Professional Settings but it doesn't really seem to do anything? We have tried to test this using separate SSID on all the points in order to more easily verify whether it jumps between the points or not but connections simply refuses to drop.
When someone is doing their funny business on the toilet in the complete opposite end of the store, on the second floor the connect is still behind held towards the RT-N66U located in the other end on the first floor. The signal strength isn't all that great, and the performance through the floor and the concrete walls is frankly not usable at all.
Even when running "Roaming Assistant" set to -70, it will rarely drop the connection even though the wireless performance goes down the drain. Another thing we noticed by going outside the store and walk until it gets dropped (doesn't seem to be any real difference between having the roaming assistant featured enabled or not..) you still have downtime ranging from 10-15 seconds up to 45-90 seconds before it reconnects to one of the closer points. Not seamless at all.
This all feels really lacklustre. The whole roaming assistant doesn't seem to do the trick. It might be because the routers/access points is considering the clients to have decent enough connection so it decides not to drop them, I don't really know. But what does it really matter if the RSSI is within whatever the Roaming Assistant finds acceptable if the performance is still being useless?
Is there no way to configure these devices to somewhat more intelligent and smarter in terms of roaming? Like dropping the connection when it drops below a performance threshold or something? Or to make them more aware of the other Asus products on the network, so when one notices that even though client A might be within what would be considered "good enough" connection, it might still notice that there is another access point in range which would provide much better connection and performance and do the switch between them?
I do notice on the Asus RP-AC68U page, Asus is talking about a "Roaming Assist" (not Roaming Assistant) feature that is supposed to do a seamless roaming between a Asus router, the RP-AC68U and clients. Is this a RP-product specific feature not available on their routers running in access point mode? Do anyone know if that mode actually works or is it just like the roaming assistant?
I'm currently trying to wrap my head around how to get a good wireless roaming solution going using Asus wireless products.
This is mostly for my work location, where we have a complete absent IT-department, but as a Asus retailer we are able to grab ourselves some products in order to try achieving stable wireless throughout our retail shop.
We currently have a Asus RT-N66U running on the first floor, a RT-AC66U on the second and a RT-AC68U in the server room (also second floor).
This provides us with decent enough coverage overall. The RT-N66U provides good 2,4GHz coverage on the first floor, and the RT-AC66U is doing a decent job on the second floor and our lunch-room is getting signal from the RT-AC68U stuck in the server room.
As all walls are made out of thick concrete, getting a signal, especially 5.0GHz // 802.11ac through any of that is next to impossible. The 2.4GHz drops off as well, but it manages to go through 1-2 walls before it dies off completely.
So everything in terms of coverage is working good enough. The problem we are facing is the fact that clients does not roam freely between the points. Not at all.
I have tried the "Roaming Assistant" feature under Professional Settings but it doesn't really seem to do anything? We have tried to test this using separate SSID on all the points in order to more easily verify whether it jumps between the points or not but connections simply refuses to drop.
When someone is doing their funny business on the toilet in the complete opposite end of the store, on the second floor the connect is still behind held towards the RT-N66U located in the other end on the first floor. The signal strength isn't all that great, and the performance through the floor and the concrete walls is frankly not usable at all.
Even when running "Roaming Assistant" set to -70, it will rarely drop the connection even though the wireless performance goes down the drain. Another thing we noticed by going outside the store and walk until it gets dropped (doesn't seem to be any real difference between having the roaming assistant featured enabled or not..) you still have downtime ranging from 10-15 seconds up to 45-90 seconds before it reconnects to one of the closer points. Not seamless at all.
This all feels really lacklustre. The whole roaming assistant doesn't seem to do the trick. It might be because the routers/access points is considering the clients to have decent enough connection so it decides not to drop them, I don't really know. But what does it really matter if the RSSI is within whatever the Roaming Assistant finds acceptable if the performance is still being useless?
Is there no way to configure these devices to somewhat more intelligent and smarter in terms of roaming? Like dropping the connection when it drops below a performance threshold or something? Or to make them more aware of the other Asus products on the network, so when one notices that even though client A might be within what would be considered "good enough" connection, it might still notice that there is another access point in range which would provide much better connection and performance and do the switch between them?
I do notice on the Asus RP-AC68U page, Asus is talking about a "Roaming Assist" (not Roaming Assistant) feature that is supposed to do a seamless roaming between a Asus router, the RP-AC68U and clients. Is this a RP-product specific feature not available on their routers running in access point mode? Do anyone know if that mode actually works or is it just like the roaming assistant?
