Problem with Client Balancing, MR 29.5.1 and room devices

[BuDo_KSBA]

Hello,

we are a school with about 80 Rooms and in every room is a wireless connection to the laser beamer. This connector is called "AirTame".

Is there a easy way to switch off client balancing for only a specific device group?

Since we switched to MR 29.x we see that the Airtame device on the room connects many times per hour to an other room. As Airtames are physicaly located we know they don't move, it's clear a problem of the client balancing. We see in the logfiles that client balancing redirect the connected airtame out of the room. As the airtames are time critical it's not a good idea to redicrect an AirTame from Room A to Room B. 

As we are in a School evoriment, it would be often that one room is free and an other full. We understand why client balancing think Room B looks as a better choice. But as the signal in an other room is worse, it isn't 🙂

Is there a easy way to switch off client balancing for only a specific device group?

None of this entry try to move it back to the correct room, where it's located.

With switched OFF client balancing in this building, the airtame keeps in the correct room, but the other clients (aka student notebooks) would also no longer distributed.
The client balancing has this problem only in a single building [~20 Rooms], in the other the airtames keeped i the room where they are located 🙂

We allready have minimum bitrate at 24mbps, limited Radiotransmit power 5 - 16dBm [5GHz] / 4 - 10 dBm [2.4GHz]

[Brash]

There's no way to switch off client balancing for specific clients.

If you don't want to disable it for all clients, you could spin up a different SSID specifically for the AirTame devices and disable client balancing on that one while leaving it enabled on the student's SSID.

[BuDo_KSBA]

i hoped you don't say this 😄 - to add more and more SSID for different devices isn't the best solution i dreamed of 🙂
But thanks for that answer, we had to discuss in team again about that option.

[PhilipDAth · Accepted solution]

Is the AP it is meant to be connected to showing a lot of clients?  Are those clients definitely from that room - or are the clients from another room connecting to this AP in error?

If this is the case, you could try increasing the minimum bit rate for the SSID to discourage clients from further away connecting to the AP.  This would free up AP capacity, and it would be less likely to want to force clients to roam away.

Another expensive option would be to add an extra AP into the room to split the load.

But I think I would just disable client load balancing ...

[PhilipDAth]

I missed the bit where you said you have already bumped the minimum bit rate.  Even with client load balancing turned off, clients should still distribute among the APs, as they are forced only to use an AP where they can connect at the minimum bit rate.