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It is important to understand that basically it is the client device that decides if/when to roam to another AP, not "the system" - though some of the newer protocols and kit have a kind of "hint" mechanism that can suggest to a client that it "might do better with AP X" - though not all clients support this and they are not compelled to "take the hint" in any case.
As ever with IT, there's exceptions and variations on this theme (there's a huge amount of "options" in the Wi-Fi standards and they have been evolving greatly over the last couple of decades) but if one accepts the basic premise as I've descried, then you'll understand if your shiny new AP's are not working as well as you might hope if it doesn't live up to your expectations. Some of Apple's older clients were notorious for doggedly hanging on the their incumbent AP, no matter how "bad" it got, even though there were better alternates available. It is "Big Wi-Fi Myth Number 2" that clients are always "hunting for the best signal" - they do not.
That said, some of the newer "whole home" and pro-sumer type system probably give you a better chance as AP's in such offerings are more like enterprise equipment in that the AP's "talk" to each other (and/or a management platform) to share information about who can "hear" which client the best, what the traffic loadings are like and so forth in order to try and figure out where best to direct any given client and pre-stage the roaming hand-offs to speed them up a bit (though they are already pretty fast.) In older stand-alone and non-integrated kit, the AP's don't talk to each other in any meaningful way.
Unfortunately, one cannot simply rely on a brand name to be an indicator of such functionality - one needs to get into the datasheets (and ideally the manuals) in advance of purchase and see what they offer. |
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2-12-2019 04:48:16