Does AIMesh 2.0 make Roaming Assistant somewhat or mostly redundant?

[hancox]

Had this thought, but wondering if anyone else has come to this conclusion.

Asus adopting standards meant to make handoff between AP's better should reduce or remove the need for RA.

In theory, RA could be used to force a disconnection for problematic clients, but you can't set this at client-level.

What say everyone else?

 

[OzarkEdge]

Had this thought, but wondering if anyone else has come to this conclusion.

Asus adopting standards meant to make handoff between AP's better should reduce or remove the need for RA.

In theory, RA could be used to force a disconnection for problematic clients, but you can't set this at client-level.

What say everyone else?

RC2-7 changed the SDK. I then had to change my 2.4 RA RSSI threshold. I think RA may still matter.

OE

 

[CaptnDanLKW]

My GUESS is that the separate RA function supplements whatever the mesh fast roam / handoff voodoo in 802.11k/v/r does. When the stand alone RA kicks in, the client (STA) is fully knocked off wifi and it has to negotiate layer 2 and layer 3. That will break all streaming, voip and Wi-Fi calling sessions.

I don’t use RA, FWIW, with good results.

 

[OzarkEdge]

My GUESS is that the separate RA function supplements whatever the mesh fast roam / handoff voodoo in 802.11k/v/r does. When the stand alone RA kicks in, the client (STA) is fully knocked off wifi and it has to negotiate layer 2 and layer 3. That will break all streaming, voip and Wi-Fi calling sessions.

I don’t use RA, FWIW, with good results.

I've never tried no RA. I just turned it OFF and will give it a spin with no RA... now that I may be running 802.11kvr(?)... I have no idea which or where.

OE

 

[CaptnDanLKW]

I've never tried no RA. I just turned it OFF and will give it a spin with no RA... now that I may be running 802.11kvr(?)... I have no idea which or where.

OE

Look back maybe a month from a post of mine where I copy a section of my syslog. I found a new never seen before entry called something like ROAMD or ROAMASD, or close. It was clearly different than the normal roamastd ones we would see when the old school RA was enabled.
Not sure what it means but the observation was just noting something new.
I really wish ASUS could give us a clear log section like
Date/time. Client (host name) band steered from 2.4 to 5
Date/time. Client (host name) was moved
From (mesh node name 1) to (mesh node name 2) due to (reason)
Date/time. Client host name connected - supported protocols 802.11k, 802.11r

I might even put in formal request through the feedback system.

 

[hancox]

My GUESS is that the separate RA function supplements whatever the mesh fast roam / handoff voodoo in 802.11k/v/r does. When the stand alone RA kicks in, the client (STA) is fully knocked off wifi and it has to negotiate layer 2 and layer 3. That will break all streaming, voip and Wi-Fi calling sessions.

I don’t use RA, FWIW, with good results.

You and i are on the same wavelength. I'll give no RA a try.

 

[OzarkEdge]

I've never tried no RA. I just turned it OFF and will give it a spin with no RA... now that I may be running 802.11kvr(?)... I have no idea which or where.

OE

That did not work. My 2.4 mobile would not roam to the node despite being near it or beyond it... a problem I never have, sticky client. Re-enabling RA put things back to normal and working well. I think RA helps when the client is not too swift.

My 2.4 mobile is a free ZTE Maven2 from AT&T with no cellular voice service. It has a free Google Fi data-only SIM on my wife's Fi account. I use a SIP softphone for voice. Home phone rings wherever there is WiFi or cellular data.

OE

 

[Smokey613]

In the past I ran RA and no SC. Two days ago, I turned off RA and turned on SC using default settings. I use the same SSID on both bands. This configuration seems to make 386.2_alpha1 wifi work as intended. So far, so good!

 

[OzarkEdge]

In the past I ran RA and no SC. Two days ago, I turned off RA and turned on SC using default settings. I use the same SSID on both bands. This configuration seems to make 386.2_alpha1 w9fi work as intended. So far, so good!

Damn! Now I've got to try that! It never ends!

Maybe I'll finally discover same SSID nirvana.

OE

 

[Smokey613]

Here is a screenshot of my main router.

 

[OzarkEdge]

Damn! Now I've got to try that! It never ends!

Maybe I'll finally discover same SSID nirvana.

OE

So far so good with SC ON and RA OFF. My 2.4 only client did not exhibit previous issue. When I have more wide roaming to do... more snow to shovel... I'll test a more modern dual-band mobile.

OE

 

[OzarkEdge]

So far so good with SC ON and RA OFF. My 2.4 only client did not exhibit previous issue. When I have more wide roaming to do... more snow to shovel... I'll test a more modern dual-band mobile.

OE

Another observation...

My 5.0 backhaul is the best ever... RSSI is stronger and Tx has reached over 1 Gbps... and outside air temp is 0F... the backhaul is to a detached and cold garage. Hmmm.

BTW, someone else posted this handy CPU temp link: http://router.asus.com/ajax_coretmp.asp

OE

 

[Wisiwyg]

Going to try this too. Gotta ask - SC?

NVM - Smart Connect...

 

[SBSTNGRSS]

Actually I am running also SC, all default and 2 rt-ac88u (Master + Node) + rt-ac68u (node) and it works like a charm. Most crazy would be now if ra would also now positively contribute now with node hand overs. Anyone tried sc and ra with latest beta?

 

[OzarkEdge]

Actually I am running also SC, all default and 2 rt-ac88u (Master + Node) + rt-ac68u (node) and it works like a charm. Most crazy would be now if ra would also now positively contribute now with node hand overs. Anyone tried sc and ra with latest beta?

RA has always helped my node 'hand off'.

My recent 41994 experience:
no SC and RA is good, with 2.4 RSSI tweak to -55
no SC and no RA is no good
SC and no RA is ok... client is slower to roam (sticky)
SC and RA is ?... I'll try that today... it's 0F AND snowing!

OE

 

[Smokey613]

I am back on 384.19 and back to my old setup of SC off / RA on with RSSI -60 The new 386 code is not working smoothly for me.

 

[SBSTNGRSS]

@Smokey613 what do you mean with not working smoothly?

@OzarkEdge To share my experience - this thread catched me on Friday and even in my setup SC was working pretty well. Since a few hours I have also RA enabled on top of SC and will give it a chance for the next 2 days, just to see how it feels in real life (with work from home, kids heavily using the network and maybe also some roaming observations). But SC on without RA added some latency to my network (before I was running a seperated SSID setup), but latency was not that bad.

 

[hancox]

I am back on 384.19 and back to my old setup of SC off / RA on with RSSI -60 The new 386 code is not working smoothly for me.

-60 seems awfully aggressive for RA - small apt/house, or lots of nodes?

 

[Smokey613]

-60 seems awfully aggressive for RA - small apt/house, or lots of nodes?

Actually it is set to -62 and only on the 2.4g band. The 5g is set to -70. I have 37 devices mostly IoT on the 2.4 band. My node unit is in an outside storage room that we converted to an office. It has 7/16 OSB on outside and interior with insulation so wifi is impacted.

 

[SBSTNGRSS]

Just to share an observation from my end after a few days and looking at the logs - it seems AiMesh takes very well care on moving clients from node to node and roaming assist seems to act more like a safety belt, to hardly drop the connection of clients. I have no hard facts nor confirmation on this I can underline with some log entries, therefore it is just an observation. How about yours ?