Increasing AP hop speed and boosting coverage/9800-40 WLC

[JWHolm81891]

I'm new on this job and I have been trying to correct a lot of wireless issues. I've added more wired APs and upgraded a lot of APs off the old 5500 controller. I'm not going to say I'm a wireless guru because I'm not, but I am able to configure APs to the controller and deploy them well enough, but I know the basics. I am using 1 SSID across all for whatever building they are in. I'm having an issue with getting connected to the next AP though as I walk around the buildings and getting the connection to leave the previous AP (and jump to the one directly over my head at times, 2.4 Ghz and 5 are enabled). Is there a way through the controller I can increase the rate of doing this? Also, I don't feel the speed on these APs is where it should be. How can I boost that as well? 

[balaji.bandi]

Client will decide what AP to connect, i do not believe you can do anything about it as per i know.

Make sure you do Site suvey done, and there is no Black spots in the area.

[Wes Schochet]

And, the client will only start looking for a new AP if the connection to the old AP degrades to a certain point.  This "sticky" behavior is common when there are many APs in a long hallway or other similar situations.

[Rasika Nayanajith]

Behavior you see mostly due to client roaming behavior. Most of the clients does not look for roam to another AP (called Target AP), unless you getting -70dBm to -75dBm from the current AP. If you properly plan your RF, not to have too many strong APs & create effective cell edge (by disabling low data rates eg 6,9 Mbps on 5GHz or below 12Mbps rates on 2.4GHz) then client cannot downshift rates to lowest value & hanging onto current AP.

HTH
Rasika
*** Pls rate all useful responses ***

[Rich R]

hop as you call it is referred to as roaming.
The roaming decision is always made by the client.
Some clients (eg Intel NICs) have options you can set or tune for how readily they roam or what thresholds they use for roaming.

You can't "boost the speed of the AP" - you can make sure the installation and config is optimised.  Generally you'll get better performance on 5G than 2.4G.  You can configure band-select to nudge clients to 5G but again that's ultimately a client decision and some clients allow you to configure that preference or even disable 2.4 altogether.  Then look at what channels you're using and what channel width you're using - beware of setting the channel width too big because that can cause you a whole lot of other problems - 40 MHz is generally enough.  Make sure you're running up to date code on your WLC.