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Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

taoofmac.com

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Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#51

Post by rcarmo »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #32

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 a…

Ubiquity would have added another zero (at least) to the price here and bring cloud features I very determinedly did not want to have in the first place (check the original post at https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/09/14/1630).

This wasn't hours of tweaking. Well, over almost a year, maybe two hours, but no more than that.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#52

Post by biggc »

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.

I had a hell of a time getting WiFi roaming to work in my house between Omada APs in a low-interference suburban neighborhood.

Any combination of 802.11r and k/v seemed to just cause my phone's connection to drop for minutes at a time when moving around the house.

I wish I could remember my exact solution for you, I believe I just turned off 802.11r and k/v, set channel selection to automatic, and undid any manual or automatic power tuning.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#53

Post by rcarmo »

goodbirb wrote: post #35

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 (th…

Actually, no. DTIM was always 3, if you'd bothered to read the original post - https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/09/14/1630

I do know what Apple devices "like" (it's kind of my thing, hence the domain name).

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#54

Post by Marsymars »

toast0 wrote: post #12
ghrl wrote: post #5

I don't quite understand the benefit of the setup. If there are legacy IoT devices that need unique named 2.4G network, just broadcast another SSID for them. So each router broadcasts main 5G (common name, fast roam etc), main 2.4G (same as above) and legacy IoT 2.4G (with a different name for each AP, and possibly worse encryption and maybe even TKIP). That wouldn't hold back the network for legacy devices.

I run a single ssid dual band network ... what tends to happen is 5Ghz is effectively ignored. 2.4Ghz has better coverage, so everything wants to live there. At least wifi 6 brought improved encoding to 2.4Ghz. I haven't had luck with the roaming extensions; when I run them, some of my devices won't connect or won't stay connected and it's a pain to monitor. I guess I could run a different SSID with roaming enhanceme…

> I run a single ssid dual band network ... what tends to happen is 5Ghz is effectively ignored. 2.4Ghz has better coverage, so everything wants to live there.

That hasn't been my experience at all. Checking my current network status, I've got 24 devices connected to 5GHz and only two devices (my two Nest Doorbells, for whatever reason) connected to 2.4GHz that also supports 5GHz.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#55

Post by rcarmo »

bdavbdav wrote: post #50
TimTheTinker wrote: post #32

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 a…

Yep exactly. This stuff quickly falls into “choose your battles” for me, and I’d rather just offload the issue

As long as you're happy with having your home wi-fi potentially controlled by the cloud...

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#56

Post by MiracleRabbit »

With Wi-Fi 8 we will finally get steerable friendly roaming like cellular radio is doing for almost 40 years now.

This "here's a neighbor table, disassoc and fuck you&good luck"-method we must use right now is just super painful. It's super complicated to build reliable networks that way.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#57

Post by bobmcnamara »

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...

This, of course, breaks clients that try to connect to the loudest RSSI when the loudest RSSI that they hear is not the one that is chosen.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#58

Post by bobmcnamara »

basilikum wrote: post #14
OptionOfT wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I don't require my 85" TV to roam, as it's not as portable as my iPhone.

Glad it works for you. I need my TV to rapidly switch APs in very heavy load wide area networks with thousands of devices while I'm cruising through the venue with my motorized couch and entertainment system. Now I want to actually build that for GPN24 next week. Wouldn't use AndroidTV for that though.

My favorite is the WiFi television/sign on an elevator.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#59

Post by goodburb »

rcarmo wrote: post #25
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…

Yeah, I tried the same channel thing, but I can't change the power, really - the flat is wrapped around two elevator shafts :)

The elevators are probably causing rapid blind spots (shadows) while the user is moving around, 802.11k is indeed useful in this case for cutting down scan time, since iOS will still scan with filtered channels.

It's an interesting setup, looking forward to an update.

Re: Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

#60

Post by ssl-3 »

esseph wrote: post #43
ssl-3 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> That works for fixed devices like a TV, but also has the effect of shrinking the effective coverage area of the wireless network as a whole. Which is normally a good thing to push the clients to roam to a better AP, OR you walked out of the building and want you phone to disconnect. But yes, does impact overall coverage area size.

That only works if there's a better AP to roam to. It's often very easy to add more APs indoors; but hanging them outside is a whole different animal.

Meanwhile: As a practical matter, shrinking coverage means "Hey, honey! I fixed the TV!" gets met with a response like "Oh, so that's why I can't listen to Audible on the veranda anymore!" :)

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