Aggressive Bandsteering MR42

[Revoliño]

I want to use bandsteering on my MR42 to make fully use of the 5GHz band. 

But I find it too aggressive when compared to my other AP, which steers the clients to 5GHz only when the signal is good enough. The MR42 steers the clients to 5GHz independent of the signal strength, which results in a lot of disconnects and bad Wi-Fi experience. 

Quote from the knowledge-base: Band steering also functions completely irrespective of the strength of the signal. Even if the signal strength on the 5GHz band is much weaker than on the 2.4GHz band, the AP will only respond to probe requests on the 5GHz band (as long as the client has been seen on that band in the last 60 seconds).

I understand that this is a choice of Meraki so to change this choice would (maybe) too much to ask. Is there a workaround or am I stuck with the option ''Dual Band Operation''?

[PhilipDAth]

Buy an extra AP to resolve the coverage issue? 

[Revoliño]

That's not an option.

Don't get me wrong, I would like to get it as an option but I cannot get the cabling to the second floor where this issue occurs. Best option in my opinion is to ''roam'' to the 2.4GHz band when the devices are getting worse 5GHz signal and ''roam'' back to the 5GHz band when the devices are getting better 5GHz signal.

[NolanHerring · Accepted solution]

The only 'easy' fix for this, and actually the 'right' fix, is to use a different SSID per band.

CORP = 5GHz only

CORP Legacy = 2.4GHz only

Band-Steering is a feature that works because the AP will essentially ignore X number of probe requests on the 2.4GHz radio (3 i think), with the hope that within that time frame the client will just associate to the 5GHz radio and call it a day.

You have to keep in mind though that band-steering is only a 'persuasion or suggestion' to the client, it can't actually force or make the client connect to its 5GHz radio. The client is 100% in charge of which radio he will want to connect to. And as you've seen, band-steering can cause issues.

The fix again is to separate the SSID between both bands, and this will prevent clients from having the issue's your talking about.

But I also agree with @PhilipDAth  that another AP on the floor above is what you should do, although I understand that you can't. Sometimes though the solution doesn't have to be perfect. You could simple place the AP on someone's desk since there is already ethernet cables ran to those locations for example, and that would at least be better than nothing (hopefully).