topic Re: Ban selection in Wireless

Ban selection

Moudar — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 09:12:09 GMT

Hi,

Why do clients choose 2,4 ove 5Ghz ? AP is 2802 (56,52)* 40MHz

All these devices support Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

Re: Ban selection

Leo Laohoo — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 09:37:50 GMT

@Moudar wrote:

Why do clients choose 2,4 ove 5Ghz

Very common behaviour especially if the wireless NIC's driver have never been updated before.

Re: Ban selection

Moudar — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 09:43:25 GMT

Is there anything that can be done to alter this behavior?

I am pretty sure that an HP-PC which is in this list has the latest drivers on it!

Re: Ban selection

Karsten Iwen — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 10:02:42 GMT

Clients do silly things ...

Are you only pretty sure the drivers are up to date or have you confirmed it? The Windows out-of-the-box drivers are often not up to date.

And you could test if Band-Steering and/or reducing the TX on 2.4 can improve the situation. But better talk to the person who did the wireless design.

Re: Ban selection

JPavonM — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 10:19:07 GMT

Using vendor features such as band selection could improve the behaviour BUT, at the end, it is a client decition to connect to one AP or another, one band or another. Maybe upgrading drivers/firmwares could improve that, maybe not, but the only way to ensure maximum performance using 5GHz band is to split access into different ESSIDs per band, or do not use 2.4 GHz band for corporate devices.

Re: Ban selection

Karsten Iwen — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 10:27:20 GMT

These advises are certainly better in the long run, but likely more problematic for a short term solution. But nevertheless it should be investigated if 2.4 is really needed.

Re: Ban selection

Leo Laohoo — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 10:45:29 GMT

@Moudar wrote:
I am pretty sure that an HP-PC which is in this list has the latest drivers on it!

Prove it.

Post the complete output to the DOS command "netsh wlan show drivers".

Re: Ban selection

Moudar — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 10:59:47 GMT

Interface name: Wi-Fi Driver : Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz Vendor : Intel Corporation Provider : Intel Date : 2022-11-23 Version : 22.190.0.4 INF file : oem388.inf Type : Native Wi-Fi Driver Radio types supported : 802.11b 802.11g 802.11n 802.11a 802.11ac 802.11ax FIPS 140-2 mode supported : Yes 802.11w Management Frame Protection supported : Yes Hosted network supported : No Authentication and cipher supported in infrastructure mode: Open None Open WEP-40bit Open WEP-104bit Open WEP WPA-Enterprise TKIP WPA-Enterprise CCMP WPA-Personal TKIP WPA-Personal CCMP WPA2-Enterprise TKIP WPA2-Enterprise CCMP WPA2-Personal TKIP WPA2-Personal CCMP Open Vendor defined WPA3-Personal CCMP Vendor defined Vendor defined WPA3-Enterprise GCMP-256 OWE CCMP IHV service present : Yes IHV adapter OUI : [00 00 00], type: [00] IHV extensibility DLL path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\IntelIHVRouter10.dll IHV UI extensibility ClSID: {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} IHV diagnostics CLSID : {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} Wireless Display Supported: Yes (Graphics Driver: Yes, Wi-Fi Driver: Yes)

Re: Ban selection

Leo Laohoo — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 11:14:30 GMT

Are there any 5.0 Ghz wireless clients associated to the same APs?

Re: Ban selection

JesseVictor5735 — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 11:26:14 GMT

Hi,

Check clients compatibility with 5Ghz, and keep im mind that 2,4 Ghz are usually prefered when you are a litlle bit distant from the router or AP.

Peace.

Re: Ban selection

Moudar — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 11:58:05 GMT

Not just now!

What about Ipads that are the same model and run same IOS version. 20 pieces at the same classroom, the AP is in the classroom.

About 15 pieces connects to 5Ghz and some connects to 2.4.

Is there anything that can be done to make them connects to 5Ghz (not removing 2.4)?

Re: Ban selection

JPavonM — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 14:03:21 GMT

As previously said, clients use internal algorithms to select which band to connect to, and the way they decide which band to connect to is programmed by the developers of the wireless adapter's firmware (signal sstrenth, SNR, channel utilization, AP load, ...). There is nothing we can do to affect that decition other than disabling 2.4 GHz. If they were Windows, you would be able to tweak the driver options to prefer 5-GHz band, but on these kind of devices there is no way to tune that.

The only way for you to improve this behavious is to provide connectivity only on 5-GHz band for them and disable 2.4-GHz band.

Re: Ban selection

Karsten Iwen — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 15:46:20 GMT

As mentioned, BandSteering and reducing the signal strength on 2.4 can influence the client decision to move to 5 GHz.

Re: Ban selection

Moudar — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 16:02:48 GMT

it is needed. As you can see many are connecting there. But i am sure that most of these can 5Ghz but connects to 2,4

The question is how to start that investigation?

Re: Ban selection

JPavonM — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 16:18:59 GMT

If this is an unconrolled environment with users connecting BYOD devices, then a way to start would be to reconfigure the current SSID to work only on 5-GHz, and create a new one with a suffix like "-legacy" to support only 2.4-GHz band and inform the users that cannot see the SSID on 5-GHz band, to connect to the legacy one.

If nobody complain then all clients are 5GHz-capable, but if some then you will know that all that can operate on 5- would be having the best performance so reducing user complaints to the minimum.

Re: Ban selection

Leo Laohoo — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 22:47:38 GMT

You've posted an output for an Intel AX2xx wireless NIC. Are these wireless clients joining 2.4 Ghz all the same wireless NIC, i. e. AX2xx?

Re: Ban selection

Moudar — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 11:41:29 GMT

The list that i attached had only one laptop which is the one i did "netsh" on, this laptop is controlled and uses a certificate to connect. Everything else is IOS or Android.

I wonder why it connects to 2.4 even if RSSI and SNR are very good (Near the AP) The last one in the attached list!

Re: Ban selection

Leo Laohoo — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:51:41 GMT

Check the settings of the NIC.

Default Intel NIC may has "Preferred Band" set to 2.4 Ghz.