Indoor Wi-Fi Roaming with OpenWRT

2 days ago

The author upgraded their home Wi-Fi with OpenWRT on Cudy AX3000 units but initially overlooked roaming issues, which became apparent with a variety of devices causing connectivity problems in certain areas.
To improve roaming, they implemented usteer for client steering and enabled 802.11k neighbor reports by installing static-neighbor-reports, ensuring APs advertise peers within the same band (2.4GHz or 5GHz) without cross-band mixing.
The setup maintains separate SSIDs: a legacy 2.4GHz network with WPA2 for IoT and old clients, and a modern 5GHz network with WPA3/SAE, relying on 2.5GbE backhaul and no cloud management for full control.
After adjustments, roaming improved with fewer sticky clients at very weak signal levels (e.g., -90dBm), though 2.4GHz performance remained congested while 5GHz showed better bitrate distribution and client associations.
The author plans to monitor the system using Graphite metrics and emphasizes the benefits of a self-managed, inspectable setup without proprietary software or cloud dependencies.

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