Hidden SSID roaming impact

[mouadmerfouk2021]

Hello community,

I have a question about hidden SSID and its impact for client roaming, I want to know if we disable broadcasting ssid, we will get any issues with client roaming.

Thank you

Best regards

MERFOUK Mouad

• Aironet Access Points
• Catalyst Wireless Controllers

[ammahend]

Roaming is mainly impacted by 3 protocols 802.11r,802.11v,802.11k, hiding ssid does not impact any of them. So I don’t think hiding ssid has any impact on roaming.

[Rasika Nayanajith · Accepted solution]

Generally hiding SSID is not recommended. It is documented in the best practice guide for AireOS given in the link below. As you can see it can lead to slower association time for certain client types that can have an impact on client roaming.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/technotes/8-6/b_Cisco_Wireless_LAN_Controller_Configuration_Best_Practices.html#concept_5A4F1A3E225343D5BEFBACA0152998A0 

Use Broadcast SSID

WLANs can operate "hiding" the SSID name, and only answer when a probe request has the explicit SSID included (client knows the name). By default, the SSID is included in the beacons, and APs will reply to null probe requests, providing the SSID name information, even if clients are not pre-configured with it.

Hiding the SSID does not provide additional security, as it is always possible to obtain the SSID name by doing simple attacks, and it has secondary side effects, such as slower association for some client types (for example Apple IOS), or some clients can't work reliably at all in this mode. The only benefit is that it would prevent random association requests from devices trying to connect to it.

It is recommended to enable Broadcast SSID option to have the best interoperability.

HTH

Rasika

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[mouadmerfouk2021]

Thank you 

[Leo Laohoo]

Roaming with hidden SSID will depend entirely upon the wireless NIC driver. 

There are some IoT (Internet of Trash) that cannot support hidden SSID because of poorly written NIC card drivers.  

I have, for example, two different brand of WVOIP phones, one will support hidden SSID and the other do not.