Does Unifi solve the roaming issue?

Zangmonkey

Zangmonkey

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jul 6, 2005
Messages
5,065
I've seen a lot of recommendations for the Unifi products but, from reading the documentations, I am not certain they solve the problem I'm facing.

I have networks which support client OEM devices that either roam improperly or they don't roam at all. That is, they do not correctly deal with the AP handoffs.

Despite my repeated discussions with the engineering teams for these devices, they are uninterested or unable to address their product defect.

So my only solution is to prevent the handoff altogether.
There are two ways of doing this:
One is with singe powerful APs (such as Luxul units)... this will not work in my situation.
The other is to virtualize the network with a controller so that the client is unaware that it's switching APs.... There are a number of expensive enterprise solutions for this but they're quite pricey for what they accomplish.

I can't tell if Unifi addresses this problem? If not, does anybody have recommendations on what APs/Controllers to use?

EDIT: After some more reading it does appear that Unifi will accomplish this. Has anybody tried it?
 
Last edited:
IMO....You'll probably get a better/and more answers to this on the ubiquiti forum.
 
The true enterprise solutions aren't really pricey. That's just to cost to get the features that you desire. Seamless roaming is not an easy task. From my experience testing a 6 AP Unifi install I did, it seems like they do OK with handoff. Not near the mess that generic APs do. But it is NOT a true roaming solution. My testing with 3 different laptop brands/models and 4 different smart phones, show about a 1-2 ping drop during handoff. All devices very quickly changed hands, it was absolutely a pleasant experience, but again, not true seamless roaming.
 
Nate7311 said:
The true enterprise solutions aren't really pricey. That's just to cost to get the features that you desire. Seamless roaming is not an easy task. From my experience testing a 6 AP Unifi install I did, it seems like they do OK with handoff. Not near the mess that generic APs do. But it is NOT a true roaming solution. My testing with 3 different laptop brands/models and 4 different smart phones, show about a 1-2 ping drop during handoff. All devices very quickly changed hands, it was absolutely a pleasant experience, but again, not true seamless roaming.
Click to expand...

I am testing a similar setup now and my results are the same, 1 or 2 ping drop and that's it.
While this isn't true roaming, this is a heck of a lot better than our current wireless. Most of them time if you move to a different AP you have to manually reconnect to the network.

Are your devices not auto reconnection to the new AP, or can they not have any packet loss while it is changing what AP it is on?
 
I have worked on several Cisco Wifi network installs and with Cisco wap controllers you get true seamless blah blah... but really are people going to walk around wth their laptops in their hands? We usually did those installs in huge warehouse environments where the folks walk around with wifi handheld laser scanners and crap.

But for about 450 x 6 for Cisco WAP's and 2500 or so for a 12 ap controller it can get quite pricey.
 
feffrey said:
I am testing a similar setup now and my results are the same, 1 or 2 ping drop and that's it.
While this isn't true roaming, this is a heck of a lot better than our current wireless. Most of them time if you move to a different AP you have to manually reconnect to the network.

Are your devices not auto reconnection to the new AP, or can they not have any packet loss while it is changing what AP it is on?
Click to expand...

The devices literally will not connect to the new AP until the current AP has completely gone out of range forcing a disconnect.
Once it has completely disconnected (resulting in all network communication timing out completely) it will reconnect to the nearest AP properly.

A few ping drops would be tolerable provided the device doesn't have to handle the hand-off.
I am literally just trying to compensate for incorrect device engineering.
 
tangoseal said:
I have worked on several Cisco Wifi network installs and with Cisco wap controllers you get true seamless blah blah... but really are people going to walk around wth their laptops in their hands? We usually did those installs in huge warehouse environments where the folks walk around with wifi handheld laser scanners and crap.

But for about 450 x 6 for Cisco WAP's and 2500 or so for a 12 ap controller it can get quite pricey.
Click to expand...

This particular install is whole-building control systems that use wifi.
If you pick up the device on one end of the building and walk with it to the other end of the building (which is very common) it will disconnect... even when it is right next to the new AP.
It's simply bad device programming which prevents it from roaming. Any other device which *does* roam (such as laptops, phones etc) works fine.

The device will simply not change APs until the one it was initially connected to has completely lost signal. Then it will reconnect to the new AP without issue.... and the process repeats as people travel back and forth in the facility.
 
Take a look at Ruckus

They have an option for VOIP phones, which have a similar problem.
The way this is handled is that all the traffic is tunneled back to the controller. The APs can send disconnect notices to the endpoints and force them to disconnect.

But basically you're going to have to get demo equipment and experiment or talk to the device vendors and find out what other customer have done.
 
Zangmonkey said:
The devices literally will not connect to the new AP until the current AP has completely gone out of range forcing a disconnect.
Once it has completely disconnected (resulting in all network communication timing out completely) it will reconnect to the nearest AP properly.

A few ping drops would be tolerable provided the device doesn't have to handle the hand-off.
I am literally just trying to compensate for incorrect device engineering.
Click to expand...

Wow that is pretty bad, something that routes all the traffic through the manager is probably your only option then. I think HP does something like that with their AP's and manager. I know ruckus does for sure, but they are expensive.
 
Unifi doesn't control roaming. You need controller based.

Ruckus has been great for us
 
tangoseal said:
I have worked on several Cisco Wifi network installs and with Cisco wap controllers you get true seamless blah blah... but really are people going to walk around wth their laptops in their hands? We usually did those installs in huge warehouse environments where the folks walk around with wifi handheld laser scanners and crap.

But for about 450 x 6 for Cisco WAP's and 2500 or so for a 12 ap controller it can get quite pricey.
Click to expand...


We use Extreme Altitude AP's throughout out warehouses for roaming with handheld scanners and thin clients. They have a single controller (PC based) that handles everything.
 
Last edited:
yes but it is dependent on the clients roaming device. it is not true roaming.
 
marley1 said:
yes but it is dependent on the clients roaming device. it is not true roaming.
Click to expand...

Are you sure about that?
If it was dependent on the client device to roam (per spec) then there would be no reason to specially note it... that's just how *all* APs work.
 
Zangmonkey said:
Are you sure about that?
If it was dependent on the client device to roam (per spec) then there would be no reason to specially note it... that's just how *all* APs work.
Click to expand...

It is impossible to do true roaming without a controller. The controller senses your signal strength and when another AP is a better connection the controller moves your connection to that AP. The laptop does not do anything.

For most people something like Unifi may work fine but good luck using handheld devices or VoIP WiFi devices without a controller. There are many other benefits to a controller but these are the 2 most obvious ones.
 
Try it. They say it roams because it I one Ssid across all aps. The device will disconnect and join seamlessly but it will disconnect.

I know in there forums it's a request maybe they will add it till then you need a more enterprise solution
 
schnell said:
It is impossible to do true roaming without a controller. The controller senses your signal strength and when another AP is a better connection the controller moves your connection to that AP. The laptop does not do anything.

For most people something like Unifi may work fine but good luck using handheld devices or VoIP WiFi devices without a controller. There are many other benefits to a controller but these are the 2 most obvious ones.
Click to expand...

Yes, I understand what a controller does.

I guess I assumed that the Unifi uses a computer as a controller with their own software solution... that's what their documentation indicated to me.

I supposed I'll have to ask more in depth on their forums.
 
Even with a controller you will still 'roam' from one AP to another. All you are doing with a controller based solution is caching keys. You will still roam and drop some packets. The benefit of using a controller based solution is that the client does not have to do a full renegotiation every time it hops access points. Even some 'fat' ap's are capable of doing this (although one of them invariably acts kind of like a controller in this regard).

You do not want your controller telling the client to disconnect from an AP to connect to another AP as that will affect the client experience. Even with a controller based solution you can't force the client to connect to a specific AP anyway, it will probe and connect to whatever ap it feels is best, which isn't necessarily the closest one.

Only one vendor (meru or ruckus or meraki, can't remember which) will make every AP *seem* like on AP with the same mac on the same channel, thereby tricking the client, but that solution has it's own drawbacks.

In every other scenario the client always determines when to roam and what AP to connect to. You can do some tricky things with a controller, like changing basic rates, setting threshold limits for probe responses, etc, but all roaming decisions are always made by the client.
 
Actually with Meru, you do have true roaming - the controller presents to you your own virtual AP (bssid). Meru also does a single channel architecture. Lookup virtual cell and virtual port. We have true 0 ms roaming, and the client never gets to make the decision on what AP to use. Very cool how it works.

The only drawback as you mentioned is that you don't have location awareness since you never actually see the AP macs. There is a partial solution to this called virtual cell overflow, but I believe it breaks the 0ms handoffs.
 
Ur_Mom said:
We use Extreme Altitude AP's throughout out warehouses for roaming with handheld scanners and thin clients. They have a single controller (PC based) that handles everything.
Click to expand...

I honestly have to say I like the purple for a change form the usual Cisco grey or data center black haha.

Kind of nice. Like a brigher version of the Sun color.
 
Over on the Ubiquiti forums they had a good discussion on this. There is a burp event when switching from one AP to another. If you're browsing the web or doing anything that uses TCP, it should work fine. If you are using VoIP or need to make sure that your UDP stream isn't going to lose any packets when switching between APs you'll need to look at $$$ virtual SSID solutions.
 
You might also look at Aruba Wifi. In the controller-based installs, I've had much better luck with them than the Cisco stuff.
 
We have a ruckus system that roams very well, at least compared to the hp system that it replaced.
Multiple access points and a single controller.
No streaming, mostly data base stuff.
 
We did a ruckus install in a 5 building 70 room condo complex. I can walk from one building to the furthest away with no disconnect and low ping it's great
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top