Hi all, I will post my script in a short while (2-3 days).
A couple of notes, just so everyone is clear.
A) Its written in PHP. I am most fluent and things just go quickly for me in PHP so I chose PHP. I know its not optimal for OpenWRT but someone can port it fairly easily if they desire. Knowing I would be sharing it I have commented it heavily.
B) My script is sort of tailored to my setup here at home, although the important settings are fed via a config file.
As previously mentioned, but I will mention again:
I live in a 3 floor home that is concrete.
Each floor has an dual band AP that is wired via ethernet to a switch downstairs.
What does this mean? That on each floor, I have a good strong 5ghz signal from that floors AP.
So the name of the game is fairly straight forward:
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If the client device has a strong RSSI at 2ghz, then roam to 5ghz via BSS-TM ASAP. This will happen quickly, under 1 second after a strong RSSI is detected.
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When the 5ghz signal starts to drop below a set value (-65 dbi is what I use for this), start sending out beacon requests and see if we can roam to a 5ghz AP on a different floor. Once the connected to AP is at -70dbm, but another candidate has a better signal, roam over to the stronger AP. This works in my case because even at 5ghz there is always some overlap with my 5ghz access points.
This works very well, about 99% of the time my script will steer the device as I am walking. I am able to have skype video conversations jumping between APs with zero cut outs or lag or stalls. The only time it doesn't work is if the client device is more aggressive in the roaming then my script.
I have 2 spots in my home where sitting on 2ghz is optimal. I leave that to the client to decide on its own. On my patio and terrace upstairs I just let the phone roam on its own from 5ghz to 2ghz there.
C) Initially I had this all setup so that even when the screen was off on the mobile device it would steer the roaming. It is possible to keep the wifi adapter awake on my S7 Edge (probably most Android devices) by sending a pool request. In the end I opted not to do this. No point in wasting my battery. I check if the device has the screen on AND is actively using wifi by checking the inactive field in the
iw dev wlanX station get CLIENTMAC
dump. If its over 1 second, I skip the loop and check again, until its under 1 second.
D) NOTE : This works best with Qualcomm based (ath9k / ath10k) adapters. As mentioned somewhere above I have a Mediatek based RE650 as well... It appears that the chipset in that device (all mt based devices?) does NOT bridge the wireless and ethernet ports correctly and the broadcast packets are dropped / somehow not handled fully on roam. I am unsure as to the cause / solution to this as I just swapped it out for my Qualcomm based RE450 and off I went.
E) Of course you will also want to setup 802.11r to make the auths quicker. In my case 802.11r works even between bands (2.4 <-> 5.8). While you are doing it might as well get 802.11k done as well for the times you want the device to roam on its own.
Will post in a couple days when its up on github.
Okay, I need definitely 802.11k...