Radio Settings - Series of Questions

Hi, @businessuer

Welcome to consulting Nebula support,

We have received your request,

For your questions,

What is the min and max power that can be set for the AP?

You can set up your radio output power from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 30 dBm in Nebula 

(If your AP is managed by Controller or Standalone mode, the minimum value you can set up would be 0).

What are the default threshold signal values in which the client will hand over the connection from one AP to another?

According to your description, you are talking about “roaming”.

Actually, trigger roaming is the client’s behavior. It would vary from different clients type (NIC), NIC settings, and even environments.

But Usually, a client would start roaming at -65 ~ -70 of the signal if there is another better signal AP it could connect to.

And the next question for how does smart steering alter these default values?

Various from device roaming, Smart steering is a feature of AP in Nebula.

This feature would detect the station’s signal which it connects with and which attempt to connect.

AP would check the station’s signal which attempts to connect with it, if the signal is lower than the value you set, AP will deny the associate request. (Station Signal Threshold)

At the same time, If the station’s signal connected to it is lower than the value you set, AP will disconnect the station proactively. (Disassociate Station Threshold)

For the last question, what is the accepted number of ping drops when the client switch from one AP to another? Is there manufacturer documentation that I can refer to?

As mentioned above, the result would be various from station type and your environment while station roaming, in our test, there are many possible results of ping loss.

But basically, it should be 0.

Hope the answers would solve your problems, it there is something you are still confused about, please leave us a message by updating this discussion,

We will keep concentrating here!

Have a nice day, Thank you!

Best Regards,

HsinBo

Hi, @businessuer

802.11 k/v is used to suggest the stations to connect to which neighbor APs, but not all stations support this feature.

Smart steering is the function for AP to disassociate bad signal stations it connected with and reject connections request from bad signal stations proactively, AP does not provide stations with AP candidate information.

The progress of roaming is station behavior as we mentioned above,

the station would detect a bad signal itself and probe for a better connection, then when it connects to the new AP, it disassociates with the old one.

Thus, roaming is not related to Smart Steering, there are different concepts that Smart Steering is the behavior of AP and roaming is the behavior of stations.

If there isn't a device with a lack of roaming mechanism or low sensitivity (doesn’t connect to other AP even though it is in bad signal), it would not trigger the threshold of Smart Steering.

But in reality, there may be a sticky station that could not roam or in low aggressiveness for roaming, thus, we need this feature to kick out them to force them to associate with a better one.

Hope the answer would solve your problems.

Thank you!

Best Regards,

HsinBo