Clients hopping from 2.4 to 5

[Adrian4]

Hello,

I have a small office with about 5 or people in it, all on WiFi. There is a single MR46 on the ceiling no further than 5 meters from each of them with clear line of sight.


One of the users is reporting constant problems with the wifi suddenly dropping. Sometimes they will connect again within a min, sometimes it takes longer.

I think the issue is effecting all of them, but this one user just has a different model laptop and the adaptor seems to be less able to deal with the issue gracefully (the other users seem to drop and come back fairly quickly).


Looking at the logs and some monitoring software, I can see that they are jumping from 2.4 to 5Ghz regularly.
For some reason their authentication seems to expire every few mins and then they re-connect but on the other Band.
connect to 5ghz - auth expires/drop - connect to 2.4 - auth expires/drop - connect to 5ghz - auth expires/drop - etc etc


When I was in the room with a scanner I could see the strength of the 2.4 was jumping up and down a a bit but the 5Ghz was always the strongest signal by a good margin.

I have set their driver options to prefer 5Ghz and updated the drivers. Unfortunately turning off 2.4 all together is not an option.


any ideas what's going on?
thanks.

[alemabrahao]

I personally prefer to create dedicated SSIDs for 2.4 and 5, as the decision is made by the device on which band you want to connect. Try installing the most up-to-date drivers for your network card.

[UKDanJones]

This is the way. Never mix 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. Clients choose which they’ll use and the only way to guarantee that they don’t make a bad decision is to force them to make a good one. 

[RSU21it]

As mentioned, you can create separate SSIDs for 2.4 and 5.  If you want to have a combined SSID as you have now, you may wish to adjust the power settings for both 2.4 and 5.  For example, set the 2.4 radio power to 3db and the 5 to 15bd - adjust power settings until you get an acceptable result for your environment.

From the log provided, it looks like the 2.4 radio power is quite high. 

All this is assuming that wireless card drivers are behaving somewhat correctly.

[Adrian4]

but why are the clients auth expiring every few mins?

[alemabrahao]

Have you checked the advanced RADIUS settings?

[Adrian4]

they seem to be standard settings just like in your screenshot. 

[alemabrahao]

Can't you test with a new SSID on just one of the bands?

[Adrian4]

not really no, changes effect too many people.

I am going to try and turn off 2.4 but it feels like working around the problem rather than addressing it.

[TBHPTL]

I think you will be much happier when you do this...  The problem is 99.5% with the clients and shoddy drivers/chipsets. 

If you ask 20 wireless engineers how to do anything  you will likely get 20 differing answers based on their individual experiences and knowledge.

[Adrian4]

yea, we already have 2.4 turned off in our main office but to do it in the area this other office is in means impacting over 60 APs in important areas. Means going through CAB etc 😕

ta very much

[alemabrahao]

If you create a new SSID and do not change the existing one, there will be no impact. It's just for testing.