Page History

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System default is added with name "band_steering_enable" to track band steering status, whether enabled/disbaled.

Band Steering Use cases

• RSSI Threshold for client devices which support both 2.4GHz and 5GHz -

Pre-association Band steering:

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a. Client has associated with a non-preferred band, RSSI is checked if it is above threshold. If it is above threshold, client is disassociated from the band and Steered to preferred band using Pre-association procedure.

• Utilization Threshold for client device which support both 2.4GHz and 5GHz -

a. Assuming, all 5GHz supported devices are directed to connect to 5GHz band initially. When the number of clients connected to 5GHz band is more than the set Utilization threshold, the clients have to be moved from 5GHz to 2.4GHz band to improve network accessibility to connected wireless clients.

Post-association Band Steering using RSSI Threshold

Description

RSSI is the Received Signal Strength of the probe request sent by the Client to the APs for connection establishment. RSSI will always be a negative value when converted to dbm.

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RSSI which determines the signal strength of the client towards AP, can have a threshold value which will help in directing/deciding as to which band the client needs to be connected to. Signal strength indirectly indicates the distance of the client from AP. It is understood that as RSSI decreases, the distance of client device from the AP increases.

Approach

RSSI is determined by the iwconfig command

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-100 to 0 (To Be confirmed)

Sequence diagram

Band Steering using Utilization Threshold

Description

Band Utilization is the number of channel bands occupied by clients. The Utilization threshold is set to a default value. When the Number of Clients connected to 5GHz band are more than the threshold value, the clients have to be steered to 2.4GHz band. This is done to improve the network quality to the connected clients.

Assuming, all wireless devices that support both 2.4GHz and 5GHz band will be automatically directed, to be connected to 5GHz initially. Here, if the number of clients connected to 5GHz is more than the set threshold value, i.e., 10, then network quality may degrade for the connected clients because many clients will be sharing the available band. For this, once the number of connected clients crosses threshold, few of the clients have to be steered to 2.4GHz.

Special case:

Before the clients are steered to 2.4GHz from 5GHz band, there has to be a check to decide which clients can be steered to a preferable band. If the clients whose signal strength is low, i.e., they are far from AP are retained in 5GHz and the clients with high signal strength are directed to 2.4GHz, the clients may lose connectivity.

Hence, the RSSI threshold and Utilization threshold implementations have to be combined to achieve a better Band Steering.

Approach

Sequence Diagram

implementation

Architecture

• Layout

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