Roaming with ruckus in large concrete home

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Don.key

Member
Apr 10, 2020
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Hi Folks,

Until now I was living in a one story home with simple dividing walls out of brick, even in this case, UniFi was not able to cover entire space with one AP (I have tried different models) and I had to place two units into my home which caused havoc with roaming: devices (Mostly iOS phones and tablets) took very long time to switch from one AP to another, my family members where pissed at me for not getting it right and after long troubleshooting / fiddling with UniFI firmwares I gave up and purchased Ruckus R710 APs.

Miraculously, one R710 was able to cover my entire home and all the issues where resolved.

However, soon we are going to move into larger home that is build using massive concrete structure and spans several floors. I am 100% sure that I will now need multiple APs and roaming in order to provide proper coverage. All APs will be connected by Ethernet cables to central Switch.

What are your experience with roaming when using multiple Ruckus APs? Does unleashed firmware works well with multiple APs / Roaming or do I need a controller?

Thanks
 
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epicurean

Active Member
Sep 29, 2014
785
80
28
I have a similar experience as you did. I used to have Unifi AP AC PROs on each floor to get sufficient good coverage. After replacing the one in the middle of the house with a Ruckus R610, it seem to reach everywhere and everyone has a steady connection - from that 1 AP! I have since added another R610 which went smoothly.
For a room there are further away from AP, I got a used H510 which seems to do the job well with wifi and also some nice LAN ports too.

I just used unleashed. Easy as the master AP automatically set ups the others when you add them to the network.
 
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ICXGURU

Member
Jun 22, 2020
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Works great with Unleashed. If you want to speed up your roaming even more, enable 802.11r and 802.11k under the advanced options in the WLAN.
 
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coxhaus

Active Member
Jul 7, 2020
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My test for roaming is call using WiFI on 1 AP to a person on the other AP receiving a WiFi call and roam to the second AP as you are talking and see if you drop any words. I don't use Rukus but that is the test I do with my Cisco WAP581 wireless APs.

I use Apple iPhones for the test.
 

Vesalius

Active Member
Nov 25, 2019
252
190
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Agree with this. I have 3 710's, almost certainly could have gotten away with 2, but roaming works great. Enabling 802.11r and 802.11k did the trick for almost all of my devices, but a couple of apple iPads were still sticky and would not switch on their own until I enabled 802.11v, which allows the AP to actually push a client off and not just leave the roaming to the client device like (r,k). Unleashed does not expose 802.11v via gui. Had to use the CLI.

If anyone is interested I can post the CLI commands to enable 802.11v (called smart-roam by ruckus).

Works great with Unleashed. If you want to speed up your roaming even more, enable 802.11r and 802.11k under the advanced options in the WLAN.
 

Dave Corder

Active Member
Dec 21, 2015
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Agree with this. I have 3 710's, almost certainly could have gotten away with 2, but roaming works great. Enabling 802.11r and 802.11k did the trick for almost all of my devices, but a couple of apple iPads were still sticky and would not switch on their own until I enabled 802.11v, which allows the AP to actually push a client off and not just leave the roaming to the client device like (r,k). Unleashed does not expose 802.11v via gui. Had to use the CLI.

If anyone is interested I can post the CLI commands to enable 802.11v (called smart-roam by ruckus).
I wouldn't mind seeing those commands. Not sure I need them with just two R710, but always curious about these things...
 
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Vesalius

Active Member
Nov 25, 2019
252
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SSH into your Master AP
Code:
ruckus> enable
ruckus# config
ruckus(config)# wlan test
  The WLAN service 'test' has been loaded. To save the WLAN service, type 'end' or 'exit'. for WLAN with a space in the name enclose in “ ”.
ruckus(config-wlan)# smart-roam 3
  The command was executed successfully. To save the changes, type 'end' or 'exit'.
ruckus(config-wlan)# end
  The WLAN service 'test' has been updated and saved. Your changes have been saved.
This is a per SSID setting as illustrated above. 802.11v "smart-roam" parameter takes values from 1 to 10. These are called roam factors and they map to a RSSI value in dB as per the list below:

1 -> 5
2 -> 10
3 -> 15
4 -> 17
5 -> 20
6 -> 23
7 -> 27
8 -> 32
9 -> 40
10 -> 60

To confirm:
Code:
ruckus(config)# show wlan
I have read recommendations from Ruckus to start conservatively at 2 or 3 and not to go higher than 5 because some manufacturers/devices might have issues.
 
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Scott Laird

Active Member
Aug 30, 2014
312
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I have a somewhat different experience with Ruckus. Earlier this summer I was having problems with UniFi and weird WiFi problems (devices that wouldn't stay connected, even in areas with good coverage, mostly), and swapped for a couple Ruckus R750s using Unleashed (200.8.10.3.278). On one hand, *when they work*, they seem to have better coverage. Unfortunately, they're *really* prone to rebooting all the time. I've swapped switches, cables, etc. SNMP shows 0 network problems between APs. Turning off 802.11r and 802.11k *seems* to make them crash less often (~1/hr -> ~2/day), but it's still not great. I'm now seeing fewer kernel panics that take out all of my switches at once, and more random timeouts causing switches to drop out. I tried opening a support case with Ruckus, but they don't want to talk to me because I didn't buy from an authorized dealer.

So, I'm not really a giant Ruckus fan this month.
 

Vesalius

Active Member
Nov 25, 2019
252
190
43
I have a somewhat different experience with Ruckus. Earlier this summer I was having problems with UniFi and weird WiFi problems (devices that wouldn't stay connected, even in areas with good coverage, mostly), and swapped for a couple Ruckus R750s using Unleashed (200.8.10.3.278). On one hand, *when they work*, they seem to have better coverage. Unfortunately, they're *really* prone to rebooting all the time. I've swapped switches, cables, etc. SNMP shows 0 network problems between APs. Turning off 802.11r and 802.11k *seems* to make them crash less often (~1/hr -> ~2/day), but it's still not great. I'm now seeing fewer kernel panics that take out all of my switches at once, and more random timeouts causing switches to drop out. I tried opening a support case with Ruckus, but they don't want to talk to me because I didn't buy from an authorized dealer.

So, I'm not really a giant Ruckus fan this month.
sorry to hear that. A couple of questions. Sounds like you have the AP's wired back to a switch or router? Do you have Mesh enabled? If so I would definitely recommend turning MESH off, which will be a pain in the butt because you will have to rebuild your network. My AP's would disconnect or restart intermittently when I had MESH turned on as they, unnecessarily when wired, try to remain in constant contact with each other via wireless and then reset the MASTER/SLAVE settings for each AP (and rebuild their network mapping) if that wireless connection is interrupted. I have been rock solid since turning Mesh off. It's completely unnecessary when your AP's are wired. Other than that potential problem sounds like the 750 may have issues with the newest firmware.
 

Scott Laird

Active Member
Aug 30, 2014
312
144
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I'm not using mesh. I've tried several different switches, different cables, etc. I agree, it's probably just a problem with R750s on this firmware rev, but it's really annoying. I keep toying with the idea of spending yet more money and buying a ZoneDirector 1200, just to be on different firmware, but I can't see how that'd really help me. Plus it adds recurring license costs, which is silly for home WiFi, even if people do depend on it for work.

So mostly I'm stuck just waiting for them to spit out their next rev.
 

Scarlet

Member
Jul 29, 2019
86
38
18
Agree with this. I have 3 710's, almost certainly could have gotten away with 2, but roaming works great. Enabling 802.11r and 802.11k did the trick for almost all of my devices, ...
I am using one R710 and one R610, will try out enabling 802.11r/k (found it under WiFi -> select specific network -> "Edit" -> Advanced -> "Radio Control").

My switch is already reporting some devices roaming (before enabling 802.11r/k)
Code:
Aug  7 19:13:48:D:next hop router x.x.x.160 moved from port 2/1/13 to port 2/1/14
Aug  7 19:10:45:D:next hop router x.x.x.102 moved from port 2/1/14 to port 2/1/13
Aug  7 19:10:34:D:next hop router x.x.x.160 moved from port 2/1/14 to port 2/1/13
 

Scott Laird

Active Member
Aug 30, 2014
312
144
43
I'm not using mesh. I've tried several different switches, different cables, etc. I agree, it's probably just a problem with R750s on this firmware rev, but it's really annoying. I keep toying with the idea of spending yet more money and buying a ZoneDirector 1200, just to be on different firmware, but I can't see how that'd really help me. Plus it adds recurring license costs, which is silly for home WiFi, even if people do depend on it for work.

So mostly I'm stuck just waiting for them to spit out their next rev.
A quick update. I finally figured out what was wrong. In one word: Sonos.

My Ruckus devices were flaky from July through early September, and then broke entirely while I was out of town over the weekend. Both wired and wireless networks were seeing ~50% packet loss with no big traffic flows or errors, and Ruckus APs were rebooting several times per hour. I finally started rebooting switches at random, and everything fixed itself while one 8-port switch was down, and then re-broke when it came up. Since I've had weird Sonos problems in the past, my first try was to unplug the Sonos soundbar connected to that switch, and that instantly fixed the packet loss. Even better, I've had 0 Ruckus reboots over the 8 days since then, as opposed to 10+/week previously.

It turns out that I had 2 Sonos devices connected to Ethernet, and presumably they were managing to loop some traffic over their internal WiFi network. There wasn't enough of it to show up as a large traffic flow, but whatever it was was enough to break things. Probably ARP or IPv6 ND packets, which go straight to the CPU on pretty much every switch. I have no clue why it wasn't causing enough of a problem to be directly visible earlier, or why it suddenly broke everything, but it's really clear that Ruckus's software *really* didn't like it.
 

ICXGURU

Member
Jun 22, 2020
37
16
8
There is no device that is going to like a loop or ARP storm. An AP has a limited amount of processing power so a major broadcast storm or ARP storm caused by a loop is going to kill the CPU eventually.

Lots of things you can do on your switch to mitigate those issues: enable IGMP snooping, enable spanning-tree (or RSTP), arp rate limiting, loop detect, and broadcast rate limiting will cover pretty much any scenario. I have 4 SONOS devices and 3 Ruckus APs including an R750 and never have a problem but only one of my SONOS is wired so that is a difference.