801.11s or .11r or ... other meshing solution?

Installing and Using OpenWrt
#1

Hi,

can someone explain, as simple as possible, what are the differences (pros / cons) concerning .11s and .11r or any other meshing/roaming solution ?
does anyone know any "article / webpage / how to" that explain that well ?

I want my wifi peripherals to be able to jump easily from one AP to another faster than now.

I have the same SSID on 2.4 and 5Ghz band, so when I go farther in the garden I can jump from 5Ghz to 2.4Ghz band and I want to keep that this way)

it seems to me that "mesh" is fashionable todays but I'm not sure it is really what I need

My main trouble is that my central AP is not supported OpenWRT and will never be (Archer C80 with a MediaTek TP1900 and 8/64MB) but is very fast, the fastest I have at home so I'm not sure I will be able to use either (.11s or .11r).
All my others AP or routers support OpenWRT

thanks in advance
vevere

1 Like
#2

802.11r is really easy, you just need to populate two fields in the
wireless security tab for the SSID.

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you also need to "upgrade" the hostapd-mini, to the full version.

Running three Archer AC2600s this way.

Note, the decision of moving from one AP to another is still made by the client.

Haven't tried 11s.

#3

mesh has nothing to do with roaming. Mesh is a solution to connect multiple APs together without having to run wires around your house. It only affects roaming in the sense that you can place APs in convenient locations and your client will see them.

to enable fast roaming/ 802.11r the easiest way is if all the devices run OpenWrt, or all the devices are some proprietary solution that work together with r. a mix of them is unlikely to work well but you could try it.

roaming decisions are always made by the client. There are some proprietary "band steering" type technologies that kick you off or refuse to authenticate you to certain places, but it's still the client that determines where it will try to connect.

4 Likes
#4

thanks a lot!
as all my APs are wired to the backbone (one using powerline) I definitely don't need any mesh solution
it is clear now

#5

probably not, but fast transition really helps devices to unstick from a bad (= far away) radio....

#6

remember however that batman-adv can also be used on Ethernet interfaces

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/networking/batman-adv.html

#7

I talked about .11s of course
took 2 min to configure .11r ... didn't work at all with my smartphone (Android 10) probably not compatible.
But seems to work well better with my laptop (AX200 card). will try will all mobile-wifi-things I have at home

Will take a look at batman
many thanks to all