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Midaz's avatar
Midaz
Apprentice
Jun 16, 2016
Solved

Seamless Roaming - Zero Handoff

Hello Netgear - Do you have seamless roaming in the works for your current line-up of wifi-routers and access-point? I am in the works of expanding my network and therefore need to buy some extra de...
  • TheEther's avatar
    TheEther
    Jun 19, 2016

    I'm curious, what is your use case for zero handoff?  VOIP call or video streaming while walking through the house?

     

    While I'm not an expert on seamless roaming, I did a little reading on 802.11r, the key IEEE standard for fast roaming, and it looks like it benefits Enterprise environments more than home.  In the Enterprise, authentication is often quite extensive and time consuming, with 802.1X and, possibly, RADIUS employed.  In the home, WPA2-Personal, the authentication most often used these days, uses pre-shared keys.  The cost of roaming to a new AP is, therefore, much less.  802.11r can still benefit a network secured with WPA2-Personal, but the improvement may be much less, possibly inconsequential.  I haven't been able to find any data quantifying the benefit that 802.11r provides in the home.  If you have any data, I would be interested in seeing it.

     

    Revolution Wi-Fi: It's Time for 802.11r (see Andrew vonNagy's comment at the bottom about the benefit of 802.11r to home environments)

    802.11r and Open networks (see another comment by Andrew where he describes how 802.11r can help non-Enterprise Wi-Fi)

    Apple iOS Fast Roaming with Aerohive Wi-Fi APs (802.11r performance measurements by Andrew, though some people have criticized his methods and, therefore, his results)

    Robust Security Network (RSN) Fast Transition (FT) (a really dry whitepaper on 802.11r)

     

    You can always try putting a suggestion for Netgear to add support on their Idea Exchange For Home forum, although the forum doesn't get enough visibility to be effective, IMO.  In the meantime, if you are determined to get seamless handoff, you will have to look at other brands.