Now we’ll turn on 802.11r and do the same thing as we did outline in this post. Our test SSID has 802.11k/r/v enabled, and I instantly noticed with 11r enabled how quickly my client switched from one AP to another. I noticed this when I was walking away from Access Point c4 and where I rejoined AP 23. As I walked away from AP 23, I joined c4 in roughly the same spot as yesterday. However, when I walked back towards AP 23, I joined closer to the AP vs. when I walked past the AP. 

So here we see a little section of my office, I started in the back(the top of the image) and walked towards AP c4, which is on the bottom of the image. The little red “X” marks the AP locations, 23 at the top and c4 at the bottom. As I walked towards c4, the green X marks when I saw my device change. I then waited about three seconds; then I walked back to AP 23. The blue X is where I saw the client change to AP 23.

Now, if we look at the join locations with when 11r disabled, we’ll see something different.

I joined AP c4 in roughly the same spot, but when I walked back to AP 23, I didn’t rejoin until almost the same spot as where I started.

It shows that over two days, my device would join AP c4 in roughly the same spot. However, AP 23 acted differently. Reasons could be my device went to sleep, and I didn’t notice as I walked back around AP 23, which would cause it to join at a later physical spot.

Or, maybe the device did roam correctly, but thought it needed to stay on AP c4 longer, the sticky client scenario — remember client devices ultimately make the roaming decision, not the Access Points.