'Stickiness' factor in Wi-Fi nets

摘要

In a perfect world, any Wi-Fi Alliance-certified 802.11 client device would perform consistently with any alliance-certified access point of the same network type. However, the alliance certifies products for interoperability only; it makes no statements about how well any client/AP pair performs. There will be some variability in the performance of different client devices. Asking a prospective system vendor about how client-to-AP associations and roaming happen is not a bad idea. In the majority of systems available today, it is the client that makes the decision about which AP it connects to and when it's time to roam to a different APThe exceptions are Meru Networks and Extricom, which, instead, move the decisions to the centralized controller in an effort to get greater and more consistent overall network performance.