SXK80 3.3.0.122 Fast Roaming Option Gone

Got a PM from DavidGo earlier this week saying they would check on this and get back to me ASAP but nothing since.  I would think this is a pretty straightforward, "Oops, we made a mistake" or "Yes, we intentionally removed a feature".  Can we get an official response, please?

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blunderdome85 wrote:

I for one need the option to turn it off restored as fast roaming is too agressive for some of my IoT devices.

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Can't see on how Fast Roaming (this is about 802.11r BSS Fast Transition) should have an impact on what you claim here.

It's in no way an active method changing the behaviour of any wireless clients roaming, like BSS transition management with Disassociation Imminent allows the network’s control layer to influence client roaming behavior by providing it the load information of nearby access points (unrelated to FT, this is part of 802.11v). The device takes this information into account when deciding among the possible roam targets This helps devices search quickly for nearby APs that are available as roaming targets by creating an optimized list of channels.  When the signal strength of the current connection weakens, your device will scan for target APs from this list (but again, this is not FT, much more 802.11k). The major benefit of FT is when using enterprise security to save part of the 802.1x RADIUS handshake, Less obvious, it works even with PSK, here the benefit isn't as noticeable as with 802.1x, because you don’t have the added latency for remote RADIUS reauthentication.

Most simple IoT WiFI STA are unlikely FT enabled, for these enabling and disabling FT does not change anything.

This does not answer why you have not got any feedback from Netgear yet.

A possible reason is the higher complexity eg. when an AP does support multiple FT and non-FT modes, highest security mode is always preferred by wireless client. This starts with the newer Fast BSS Transition (802.11r) for WPA3, starting with FT-SAE (WPA3-Personal) and FT-EAP (WPA3-Enterprise), whereas FT-PSK (WPA2-Personal) and WPA3 transition modes are included, and have PMF enabled.