Survey signal strength Vs Client Rssi

[muhsi_2015]

Hi,

Passive survey shows the least signal in the area is  -65 dBm.

But the 5 ghz client still connect to  2.4 Radio . Client getting -82 dBm from the AP's (Apple airport utilities) 

2) 

I disabled the radio of 2.4 Ghz , Then the apple phone connected to -68 dBm

Why ?

Thanks

[muhsi_2015]

Hi,

Passive survey shows the least signal in the area is  -65 dBm.

But the 5 ghz client still connect to  2.4 Radio . Client getting -82 dBm from the AP's (Apple airport utilities) 

2) 

I disabled the radio of 2.4 Ghz , Then the apple phone connected to -68 dBm

Why ?

Thanks

[Bill Levin]

You need to verify which access point you were connecting to and whether that access point was the closest one to you.

There also may be a difference in the antenna that performed the survey and the apple phone causing a discrepancy in signal strength.

When you disabled 2.4ghz, you likely forced the phone to rediscover the AP with the strongest signal and the phone roamed to it. 

[Scott Fella]

A passive survey is used to verify coverage at that time with a wireless card, internal or external, to the device used to perform the survey. This doesn't mean that all other devices will see that same signal, because wireless nics can have certain TX/RX power, spatial streams, etc. 

Now when you are comparing why your seeing poor signal, well the one question I always ask is, is your device associated to the right AP?  When I hear about this issue it's usually because the device maybe is sticky and doesn't roam. Another reason is channel utilization on that AP or load on that AP in which the device is possibly associating to an AP further away. 

Remember that the client device makes the decision on what AP to join. You can tweak the RF and play around with data rates and power to help reduce the coverage since you already had a survey performed. You can also change the client band select to a higher threshold like 4 or 6 to see if that helps with making devices choose the 5ghz over the 2.4ghz.  

I really like to have surveys done because that guarantees your coverage, but you also need to adjust your RF settings to help on the client side. 

-Scott

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