WAX610 fast roaming in local management

speedman wrote:

have a 3 floor house, with a very big garden, so I have 4 APs:

- 2 WAX610 (AX1800)

- 1 HPe E-MSM460 (J9590) 

- 1 outdoor EnGenius ENH1750EXT

 Both EnGenius and HPe support fast roaming. 

Seriously? Carefully read about the requirements please. Have deployed WPA2 Enterprise with an RADIUS Server infrastructure? This is a requirement for both EnGenius and HPe... The controls in the respective Web UIs might exist, regardless the required infrastructure and configuration.

Fast roaming WiFi, also known as IEEE 802.11r or Fast BSS Transition (FT), enables a client device to roam quickly in environments implementing WPA2 Enterprise or WPA3 Enterprise security, by ensuring that the client device does not need to re-authenticate to the RADIUS server every time it roams from one access point to another. This is accomplished by actually altering the standard authentication, association, and four-way handshake processes used when a device roams (i.e., re-associates) to a new WiFi access point.

Enabling these - without knowing and understanding what will be involved - does not change anything in WPA2 Personal (WPA2 PSK WPA2 AES), nor does it bring magically a non-standard key exchange for WPA3 Personal aka. WPA3 SAE. Even if asking and requesting repeatedly...

Keep in mind WPA3 Enterprise fast roaming builds on WPA2 Enterprise by adding stronger security (like PMF) and using mechanisms like PMK Caching and 802.11r (Fast BSS Transition) for quicker handoffs, often in a WPA2/WPA3 transition mode for compatibility, but it requires well-configured APs and updated clients to avoid issues where older devices struggle with multiple Authentication Key Management (AKM) types, leading to roaming failures if not set up carefully. 

Leaving alone that the majority of wireless clients (consumer audio, consumer video, IoT, ....) in the field don't support WPA2 or WPA3 Enterprise. Even for business users, it's a challenge properly deploying all this. 

As long as you stick to WPA2 Personal there is no need to enable 802.11r on any AP - even if the controls kind-of exist on random APs. Yes, with the help of cloud support by Netgear Insight, seamless roaming is possible for WPA3 Personal / WPA3 SAE.

Hi speedman,

Welcome to the community!

Unfortunately, the said feature is not available in the local UI (management) mode. You can submit an idea/suggestion here instead.

Kind regards,

BrianL

So, as far I understoon, still no fast roaming on WAX610... 

I was looking for any updates, and first post I've seen was my post..

Very sad... 

catsmangruff almost - for WPA2-PSK there is no need. 

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fipoac

Still not available.

What a shame, that Netgear does not seem willing to allow users to use that feature without paying for another subscription.

Curiously all other big players do not feel the need to block such features - which have nothing to do with central management - in their local only modes.

@William_vVthe only technial reason is syncing the mobility domain, but that should not pose a problem from a software perspective, just allowing a user to set it would suffice.

 

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fipoac William_vV  speedman  802.11r needs a centralized endpoint to share encryption keys between access points. Because of this I'm assuming the netgear cloud services handle that process. Typically other product lines will have a management endpoint that can be run locally, but this product line doesn't have that.

Still not available.

What a shame, that Netgear does not seem willing to allow users to use that feature without paying for another subscription.

Curiously all other big players do not feel the need to block such features - which have nothing to do with central management - in their local only modes.

William_vVthe only technial reason is syncing the mobility domain, but that should not pose a problem from a software perspective, just allowing a user to set it would suffice.

Dear Dane,

Although this discussion is already few month old, I feel the need to connect on the topic as this also is a disappointment for me. Maybe however you can help me solve this ....

I have a WAX214 AP that works well for half a year now and decided recently to do away with an older non-NG AP and add another WAX. To have some more functionality, specifically seamsless roaming and some more range I decided to get the WAX610 next to the WAX214 I already had.

The WAX214 has a tick that can be set for fast roaming and I indeed also found, after some reading, that on the WAX610 this can be set as well, however only when using the Insight/Cloud management. This was pretty diappointing, not what I expected and am now not sure if I should downgrade the 610 to another 214 as I do not need remote management would not want to pay a yearly fee only for fast roaming.

I can see that for businesses the insight app has real value but for home use it is no more than a nice to have, effective roaming however is of value everywhere.

Can you explain why this is as it is? Is it technically difficult to set/have fast roaming with the 610 locally or is it, to be blund, just a choice of the marketeers to link it to the subsciption?

Hope you can help us home users a bit here ...

Many thanks in advance,

William

speedman,

Welcome to the community! :) 

I moved your post here in the Idea Exchange for Business board.  In this way, the development team can see what feature (fast roaming) does WAX610 users wanted to be added to the functionality of it while in local management mode.

Be reminded that the more kudos given by community members to this feature request will help as the development team will be reviewing the post that has the most kudos and might get considered to be implemented

Regards,

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team