Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT • Hacker News Board

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#31

Post by anotherhue » Thu, May 28, 2026, 4:40 PM UTC

giobox wrote: post #22

cj wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until it gets stuck on a far away AP because it was the first AP to come online the last time the network rebooted. Not sure if roaming is actually the fix for this problem. For whatever reason my Ring cameras just love connecting to the worst and most far away AP in my house.

Not sure how widely available this feature is, but the unifi controller software for the popular Ubiquiti APs lets you bind individual client devices to specific APs such that they can only connect to the ones you choose. I had to solve a similar issue for some crap IoT lights that would join the incorrect AP after a power cut every time. > https://community.ui.com/questions/Lock-Client-to-Specific-A...

for static clients that works well, though you can usually set a min rssi and get the same benefit without so much clicking.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#32

Post by TimTheTinker » Thu, May 28, 2026, 4:43 PM UTC

Not to be that guy, but...

If you want multiple SSIDs, roaming, daily neighbor scanning and auto channel selection, etc, but don't like to spend hours tinkering with your equipment beyond the physical setup, then Ubiquiti UniFi equipment is great.

I stopped recommending UniFi around 2020 (several of their best engineers had left, and they made some dumb choices), but IMO they're back to being a decent choice. And I appreciate that they're become a one-stop solution for all home/SOHO as well as mid size enterprise IT needs.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#33

Post by jonathanlydall » Thu, May 28, 2026, 4:47 PM UTC

andor wrote: post #7

jonhohle wrote: post #2

I need to spend some time on it but I purchased two Omada APs to pair with my OpenWRT router thinking roaming would just work with mostly Apple devices. That didn’t happen. I’m hoping some of this article applies and I can improve the situation a bit.

For Omada devices, you need a "Controller". You can run the Omada Controller software on an existing computer, get one of their controller devices, or use their cloud-based service, which should be free at your scale.

I’m pretty happy with my Omada controlled EAPs around my house.

Running Omada on my Windows Server was painful (doesn’t really run properly as a service, software updates are a chore), but since I moved it to run on Proxmox using a super simple LXC image (I maybe got terminology wrong here) it’s been very nice.

Supposedly I should have excellent roaming between the APs, but I’m not sure how to check. Certainly, walking from one end of the house the other while on a Teams or WhatsApp call on my phone has maybe only a super minimal amount of time that I might not hear the other person (sub second for sure, if at all), but mostly I don’t notice.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#34

Post by js2 » Thu, May 28, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

goodburb wrote: post #4

You can stick to 802.11r only by lowering the transmission power and have all the APs on the same channel, in my tests it ended up switching much faster than K/V. (~75ms) On iOS, equal channel with correct ESS will switch liberally. On Android 14+ with Broadcom chip it will start conservative, then switch liberally after the first poor signal switch-over event, up until disconnection. Android (Pixel/Moto) will never…

Apple has some minimal recommendations as well:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102766

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#35

Post by goodbirb » Thu, May 28, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

99% of what he did is not needed. Only 2 things are needed: enable fast roaming (FT), and change DTIM from the openwrt default of 2, to 3. That's all. No need to install usteer, extra hostapd fields. Nothing.

By lucky chance, while he set up usteer, he modified DTIM to 3 thus fixing the fast transition roaming, which doesn't work well on default openwrt because of DTIM. Especially Apple devices really hate DTIM=2 (they need the extra off-time given by DTIM to properly scan the other channels).

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#36

Post by acidburnNSA » Thu, May 28, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

I spent a long time recently setting pretty much this same thing up. When in my office my Android phone battery rapidly died, I guess because usteer kept trying to steer it or something. I ended up turning off usteer and 802.11r and just deal with slow roaming. Maybe I should try again with the static neighbor reports.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#37

Post by raj_db_dev » Thu, May 28, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

Curious if you think usteer is viable without wired backhaul. I have two OpenWRT routers in different rooms in differnt part of the house and not possible to connect them by ethernet. Would the usteer overhead make things worse if they're just communicating over wifi?

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#38

Post by ssl-3 » Thu, May 28, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

anotherhue wrote: post #31

giobox wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how widely available this feature is, but the unifi controller software for the popular Ubiquiti APs lets you bind individual client devices to specific APs such that they can only connect to the ones you choose. I had to solve a similar issue for some crap IoT lights that would join the incorrect AP after a power cut every time. > https://community.ui.com/questions/Lock-Client-to-Specific-A...

for static clients that works well, though you can usually set a min rssi and get the same benefit without so much clicking.

That works for fixed devices like a TV, but also tends to shrink the effective coverage area of the wireless network as a whole.

That can mean that the portable wifi speaker-widget (which itself doesn't need much bandwidth) might go from working fine on the back deck or well-enough about anywhere else in the yard, to not working at all outside.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#39

Post by bobbob1921 » Thu, May 28, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

I do a lot of work on very large Wi-Fi networks (i.e. hotel/apartment complexes with 80 to 500+ access points), for a very rough quick test of coverage quality and roaming performance, find a Ping app for your phone that allows you to set a super low interval (i.e. time between pings sent), and ping your gateway router (i.e. 192.168.1.1) and while that is running walk around your home/location. It’s important that the Ping app keeps sending pings even if they drop, i.e. it should just look like a waterfall/constant stream of fast pings that show you red/green pings and ideally a summary at the end. On iOS the app I tell people to use is called “Ping” with a blue icon, I usually have to share the link to the app as there are several with this name (I’m not on my phone currently or I would share the link) there are several ping apps that do offer this fast ping feature.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#40

Post by tra3 » Thu, May 28, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC

Question for the wifi experts in this thread...

What's a good off the shelf multipoint wifi system these days? I have Amazon's Eero right now and it's ok.

I'd love to go back to my linksys wrt54 roots but that's not in the cards currently..