Roaming issue wax630

Thank you for using Insight to manage your WAX630s.

1)In general, in SMB/Enterprise  market the " Mesh" term is used for wireless backhaul. (see Insight Instant mesh articles).

since you are having all AP connected to wired backhauls,  i would recommand you go to Insight and turn off  mesh.

2)As per IEEE 802.11 (or Wifi standard ) the decision on when to roam is decided by the wireless client.

Each of the clients has a slightly different behaviors.  in laptops that run windows, you can configure the behaviour on wifi properties. 

3) In insight managed APs  NETGEAR support something  called 802.11R and OKC based roaming. These will help the clients to roam better as the network feeds neighbor information to the wi-fi client to make better decisions on when to roam.

Router====Switch====== AP1 (WAX6xx)

                                           AP2 (WAX6xx)

                                           AP3 (WAX6xx)

                                            AP4 (WAX6xx)

5)Here are things you can do on Insight to  helps better roaming behaviour among  wifi clients.

5.1)Make the cell size smaller by changing  the TX power of the AP.

Best way to do it is to Install a  popular wi-fi scanners on client and take measurements of what it hears at a given location.

(There are free and paid tools, almost has have free trail versions)

make sure at give location the difference in good-better-best wifi signal is -8dbm or more.  

5.2) Enable 802.11KVR from Insight management.

5.3) increase the basic data-rates from insight management.  Higher the datarate, smaller will be active cellsize. This is per SSID configuration on Insight. This will help clients roam to radio that provide higher data-rates.

Here are some good articles on client side roam decisions.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203068

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202628

you can find similar articles for windows.

Wifi tools that help you tweak the Wi-Fi cell size per AP : (you can use any of these).

https://www.accessagility.com/wifi-scanner

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=abdelrahman.wifianalyzerpro

https://www.accessagility.com/optifi-agent-windows-download

https://www.netspotapp.com/features.html

https://www.intuitibits.com/products/wifiexplorer/