Do clients sometime roam unnecessarily between APs, and how does roaming affect overall network performance?
Unnecessary roaming between APs occurs more often than one would expect. APs maintain connections with clients based on association databases that register every client requesting to use the AP’s services. If the association database is not properly maintained or if the AP cannot associate clients in a timely fashion, clients will attempt to roam to other APs. Overall network performance is adversely affected by unnecessary roaming. Every time a client roams between APs, client throughput is affected. In addition, the APs involved are unnecessarily busy disassociating and re-associating clients which should not be roaming, thus decreasing the APs ability to handle new “legitimate” clients.
