Mar 12, 2013 - AP issues with Macintosh clients slow connect/dropping connection. That the network is slow, takes too long to connect to the wireless AP,.
In this technote ill teach you about the basics of roaming and what aruba came out to help with the roaming issue. Lets Start What is roaming? Its moving your wireless devices between APs in the same building, and the roaming is from one AP BSS to another using the same SSID How does roaming work? The decision to roam is done by the Wireless card of the device(for example Iphone, Tablet, Laptop), which means that this rules for roaming comes out of the wireless card manufacture and its usually determined by the strength of the signal, or noise level So basically if your wireless card is bad doing roaming then you will suffer of sticky client problem What is sticky client? It’s a client associate with an access point, yet don’t roam to a more appropriate access point, even if you got a better signal from an AP which is closer For example if you are connected to an AP X and you start moving near an access point Z, even if you got better signal from Acess point Z the client will remain connected to AP X because of the roaming decision of the wlan card of your device.
802.11k Assisted Roaming It let 802.11k capable clients to request for neighbor report containing information about neighboring aps that are candidates for roaming Like it well said it request information to enable the client to find a candidate ap for roaming but here still the decision of the roaming is still on the client. Example of roaming Without 802.11k Example of roaming With 802.11k 802.11r Fast Roaming This let the client to do the initial handshake for roaming even before the client roam to target AP. This is really important because it enables the client to do a fast BSS transition, without needing to re authenticate at every AP 802.11r Fast Roaming and ArubaNetworks 802.11r with ArubaInstant With the 802.11r what it does is that the client pre authenticate with multiplle APS in the cluster even before roaming. As part of the 802.11r also the instant support Fast BSS transition protocol which reduce the time of romaing delay between APs Now you need to enable it in order it to work and you need to be sure that your clients support 802.11r, if your clients or some of them does not support it please do not enable it. To enable it its really simple Example of roaming without 802.11r Romaing With 802.11r ArubaNetworks and Roaming with sticky clients. ClientMatch Arubanetworks have addressed this issue and solve it with Aruba Client Match by matching the client with the best AP. How does this work?
Its an aruba technology that continusly gather information from devices and using that information it matches the device to the best AP and best radio. It integrates 3 features. Band Steering.
Spectrum load balancing. Hand of assit and band balancing This is how it works 'taken from Aruba KB'. Aruba AP generates client probe reports. AP's will update the client probe reports to the controller every 30s. Controller aggregates the probe reports into virtual beacon report.
Controller sends a subset of VBR for associated clients to relevant AP’s. AP monitors client SNR and runs sticky client & band-steer check periodically. Controller also runs dynamic load balancing algorithm algorithm periodically. In summery the decsition to roam is not on the client anymore, the controller will take the decistion if it should roam to a better AP or not.
Another important note is that if you got Band steering on, or spectrum load balancing, and you got client match enable, the clientmatch will take precedence over each independend feature. Finally if we got 802.11k why do we need Clientmatch?
Lets make a few points:. Like i said before the decition to roam still is on the client, 802.11k wont guarantee that the client will roam, even if it should.
ClientMatch force for a roam if, 802.11k does not. Clientmatch has the information of the whole infraestructure! Additional note: How do i help clientmatch to work better? To make this work better you need to set the Transmit power from 12 min to 18max, try not using to maximum output power for example a ap 105 and using all the 23 dBm I have seen many times Aruba Gurus in the forum pointing this.
So if you want to help the clientmatch to work better or you see problems with this, then please try setting the correct transmit power. Not part of this technote but not more ap power is necesary the asnwer:) Wifi is a 2 way communication and if you got an AP that is transmitting at a high transmit power but you got a device that cannot reply him with the same power, then you migh encounter lost frames and frames retries. What should i do if i do not have Clientmatch yet? As the roaming totally depends on the wireless card manufacter you can try: 1-Upgrading the driver of the WLAN card.
2-Configuring local-probe request, here i quote one of Colin Explanations which was really good, that i copy it to my notes and now i copy and paste you all ' Use the ' Local Probe Request Threshold' parameter under the Advanced Tab in the SSID Profile - Many times, in high density environments, clients will stay associated to access points that are very far away from them, because the driver in the client WLAN card believes that the signal is still good. The biggest issue this creates is that a client that is far from an access point normally associates at a lower rate and transmits more slowly, because of the distance. This will also degrade the throughput of clients that are closer and associated to the same AP, because they have to wait longer for that client to transmit. If you change the ' Local Probe Request Threshold' to something like 20 or 25 (dB), access points will only accept associations clients that are of a certain signal strength, limiting clients to only choose access points that are better for them' This feature works better if you hide SSID.
Now remenber that even with the local probe request the last word if the client roams or not has it the device. The local probe request will encorage them to take the right decistion:) Cheers Carlos. Does this come from experience?
Can you elaborate which devices you've seen that have problems connecting with 802.11r active? Aruba material mention explicitly that it should not give issues on non-supported clients: ' Fast BSS Transition is operational only if the wireless client supports 802.11r standard.
If the client does not support 802.11r standard, it falls back to the normal WPA2 authentication method.' EDIT: mm, other Aruba materials are a bit more complete apparently: ' If dot11r is enabled, iOS clients such as iPad/iPhone gen1 (limitation on iOS) and all MAC-OS clients (limitation on MAC) fail to connect to the network.'
What is the best way to optimize performance on my Mac Mini Sever? I recently completed mutiple video editing projects that filled both my 1tb drives (with less than 5% space remaining on each). I copy/pasted the files to an external drive after the project but my computer is now running very slow (i see the swirly lollipop thing almost every time i click a new function).
Is there something native to the Mac OS that I can use for cleanup? I would rather not use 3rd party software if i can help it. First, back up all data immediately, as your boot drive might be failing. There are a few other possible causes of generalized slow performance that you can rule out easily. If you have many image or video files on the Desktop with preview icons, move them to another folder.
If applicable, uncheck all boxes in the iCloud preference pane. Disconnect all non-essential wired peripherals and remove aftermarket expansion cards, if any. Check your keychains in Keychain Access for excessively duplicated items. Boot into mode, launch Disk Utility, and run Repair Disk. Otherwise, take the steps below when you notice the problem.
Step 1 Launch the Activity Monitor application in any of the following ways: ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.) ☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens. ☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Activity Monitor in the icon grid. Select the CPU tab of the Activity Monitor window. Select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected.
Click the heading of the% CPU column in the process table to sort the entries by CPU usage. You may have to click it twice to get the highest value at the top. What is it, and what is the process? Also post the values for% User,% System, and% Idle at the bottom of the window. Select the System Memory tab. What values are shown in the bottom part of the window for Page outs and Swap used?
Next, select the Disk Activity tab. Post the approximate values shown for Reads in/sec and Writes out/sec ( not Reads in and Writes out.) Step 2 If you have more than one user account, you must be logged in as an administrator to carry out this step. Launch the Console application in the same way you launched Activity Monitor. Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages.
If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select View ▹ Show Log List from the menu bar. Select the 50 or so most recent entries in the log.
Copy them to the Clipboard ( command-C). Paste into a reply to this message ( command-V). You're looking for entries at the end of the log, not at the beginning. When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion. Important: Some personal information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting. That should be easy to do if your extract is not too long. First, back up all data immediately, as your boot drive might be failing. There are a few other possible causes of generalized slow performance that you can rule out easily. If you have many image or video files on the Desktop with preview icons, move them to another folder.
If applicable, uncheck all boxes in the iCloud preference pane. Disconnect all non-essential wired peripherals and remove aftermarket expansion cards, if any. Check your keychains in Keychain Access for excessively duplicated items. Boot into mode, launch Disk Utility, and run Repair Disk. Otherwise, take the steps below when you notice the problem. Step 1 Launch the Activity Monitor application in any of the following ways: ☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search.
Select it in the results (it should be at the top.) ☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens. ☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Activity Monitor in the icon grid.
Select the CPU tab of the Activity Monitor window. Select All Processes from the menu in the toolbar, if not already selected. Click the heading of the% CPU column in the process table to sort the entries by CPU usage. You may have to click it twice to get the highest value at the top. What is it, and what is the process? Also post the values for% User,% System, and% Idle at the bottom of the window. Select the System Memory tab.
What values are shown in the bottom part of the window for Page outs and Swap used? Next, select the Disk Activity tab. Post the approximate values shown for Reads in/sec and Writes out/sec ( not Reads in and Writes out.) Step 2 If you have more than one user account, you must be logged in as an administrator to carry out this step. Launch the Console application in the same way you launched Activity Monitor.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select View ▹ Show Log List from the menu bar. Select the 50 or so most recent entries in the log. Copy them to the Clipboard ( command-C). Paste into a reply to this message ( command-V).
You're looking for entries at the end of the log, not at the beginning. When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested. Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some personal information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting. That should be easy to do if your extract is not too long.
Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the efficacy of any proposed solutions on the community forums. Apple disclaims any and all liability for the acts, omissions and conduct of any third parties in connection with or related to your use of the site. All postings and use of the content on this site are subject to the.