Steering and Load Balancing NWA210AX

jpblanch75

I have 2 NWA210AX APs at opposite ends of my location.  The merge or crossover dbm point in between the APs is about -60 to -65.  I use seperate 2.4 and 5ghz SSIDs.

I want the 2 APs to load balance, splitting the load, so that each AP will keep fixed devices around -65 or better.  I setup Load Balancing for 25 devices to each band and that didn't help much.  I then changed Band Steering to -60dbm signal threshold and disassociation threshold to -65dm and that seemed to do the best in my situation.

I still have a few devices still sitting at below -65dbm....as low as -74dbm.

Am i using the above settings correctly?  Also is there a way to maybe have a setting to adjust how aggressive this is?

Also what changing this setting "Allow Station Connection after Multiple Retries" do?

I find it funny that a device will stay connected to an AP at -61dbm and the nearest AP to it is at -40dbm.

Thanks

Zyxel_Bella

Hi @jpblanch75

 

For smart steering feature’s guide and settings, you could click the link for more information.

[NEBULA] How to configure smart steering to optimize the wireless network?

https://community.zyxel.com/en/discussion/10008

 

Because AP drops the connection when the clients are idle or have a low signal and clients can attempt to re-connect to AP following by the Allow Station Connection after Multiple Retries and Station Retry Count setting, you will see some clients with low signal still connecting to the AP sometimes.

Thank you

 

Regards,

Bella

 

jpblanch75

Zyxel_Bella said:

Hi @jpblanch75

 

For smart steering feature’s guide and settings, you could click the link for more information.

[NEBULA] How to configure smart steering to optimize the wireless network?

https://community.zyxel.com/en/discussion/10008

 

Because AP drops the connection when the clients are idle or have a low signal and clients can attempt to re-connect to AP following by the Allow Station Connection after Multiple Retries and Station Retry Count setting, you will see some clients with low signal still connecting to the AP sometimes.

Thank you

 

Regards,

Bella

 

While that post give some good info which I already read, I feel like the details I was asking about aren't in it.  

I would like the APs to balance the load based on signal strength not just weak signal or overloaded AP.  When I think about load balancing,,,, I'm thinking that the AP should kick the client if its weaker than it could be with a different AP.  Maybe the APs aren't smart enough for that and I'm asking too much.

Zyxel_Bella

Hi @jpblanch75

 

Load balancing will trigger when AP is overloaded, it will disassociate excessive stations one by one mildly by Idle timeout and RSSI.

If the stations amount not yet reach the threshold, load balancing won’t perform.

We suggest to use smart steering settings to achieve the ideal result if your environment doesn’t have many stations.

Thank you

 

Regards,

Bella