Meru Technical Note - How Does Band Steering Work?

Description

How Does Band Steering Work?

Scope

RELATED PRODUCTS: All products

RELATED SOFTWARE VERSIONS: 4.x, 5.x

KEYWORDS: band steering
Solution
- We support 2 types of Band Steering
- The first type is A-Steering wherein all clients that are A-capable are moved to the A-band.
- The next type is N-Steering wherein all clients that are AN-capable are moved to the A-band.
- In N-Steering therefore, all ABG clients are steered to BGN-band.

Band steering works in the following way:

- Client probes on both bands
- Client's probes on both bands is responded to
- Client sends an Auth on BGN band (say)
- if the client is an ABGN client, the AP stays quiet and does not respond on the BGN band
- the AP waits until the client sends an Auth on the AN band
- the moment the client does so, the AP responds to the Auth allowing the client to move into state 2 (Authenticated but not Associated)
- And so on, the client gets "steered" to A