Clients misses ping while roaming from AP to AP

[hamid.nabil1]

Fully updated win10 clients misses one or two ping while roaming from one accesspoint to another. Other client roam without any issue. Both clients are on the same SSID and 2.4Ghz. 

wlc is wism2- v8.3.140.0

AP: AIR-CAP2702E-E-K9 

Any help is appreciated!

[Scott Fella]

When you tested with other devices that work, are you testing from a truck moving the same speed as when the issue happens? You might want to look at 802.11kvr to see if that helps with your roaming issue. Does seem to be an issue with the devices.
If those mini PCs are the only one that have the issue when roaming slow or fast on a truck, then you isolated an issue that points to the device itself. I’m assuming that any roam is the issue and not certain area’s in the facility which could be an issue with AP placement and roaming predictions. For best roaming, AP’s should be placed in the intersection. This way the roaming is predicted better by the device. 802.11k will help provide an optimized list of AP’s to the device. Just validate that your NIC and driver supports it.

[hamid.nabil1]

@Scott Fella I drove the truck and had a laptop with myself i didn't miss a ping or connection at all even though the mini PC had the same network adapter as my laptop. Yes raoming problems or (losing citrix/sap) can happen anywhere. About enabling 802.11k is there any downside for the clients that works just fine? I did make another SSID which had 802.11k on it didn't help. I attached the map and AP position. There is good signal coverage indeed.  

[Scott Fella]

Roam starting from AP 19 then move to AP 20 and then down to AP 22. That should be the best predictive roaming with the placements of your AP’s. Or even up and down the same isle where you have AP’s. If you are loosing pings in those scenarios then it’s something with those mini pc’s.
Are the mini PCs have external antennas and are they mounted in a good location? If K didn’t help, then it’s either that the device doesn’t support it or it plainly didn’t improve at all.

[hamid.nabil1]

Mini-PCs do have external antennas which is mounted somehow to receive to good signal. Would you recommand any industry mini-PC? Just in case if we have to replace them?

[Scott Fella]

I don’t have any good recommendations as in the past, my clients ran various different manufacturer hardware and variety of NIC cards. I wish I did have some recommendations that I have tested. Have you looked at the newer intel NICs and see if any mini PCs have them or can be converted to them so that you can test. That would be my next route.

In the past, my clients would enable persistent on the Citrix backend and others went to this solution to keep persistent connection.

https://www.netmotionsoftware.com/products/mobility/

[hamid.nabil1]

We did actually changed NIC from 3160 to 7260 same issue with both.

[Scott Fella]

I haven’t seen any downside to enabling k or v excerpt when there are bug related issues. 802.11r might cause issues in which you might want to test with a different SSID.

[hamid.nabil1]

Found out that NIC Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 is not supportting 802.11k 802.11r or 802.11v

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000021562/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html

[Scott Fella]

Yeah so now that’s identified, I would try to pursue a different NIC in a mini PCs unit to see which can work best in your environment. You can possibly test with a usb NIC just for comparison.

[Scott Fella]

802.11KVR can help with water roaming, but again, I would test it on test said prior to even changing the configuration on the existing SSID. The 7260 is a good card, I have that on my Lenovo X1 which never gave me any issues. Do you see the same issue when testing on an open SSID or one that is WPA2/PSK? Does your application on the backend have persistent function to prevent having users to login again?

[hamid.nabil1]

Both SSIDs which I tested with are WPA2/PSK. I myself use 7260 in lenovo t440s with no problems or at least i didn't see ping drops during roaming. Citrix does have presistent for two minutes as I heard.

[hamid.nabil1 · Accepted solution]

Tried with Intel AC 9260 in two machines over five days of normal work and it is working just perfect.

[Scott Fella]

There you go. Keep testing to see what works the best. Citrix has persistent that is configurable so keep that in mind also. I don’t know what is default and or if it’s disabled by default, but that will help keep the session active if network is lost.