A Case Study of Association Instability in Dense IEEE 802.11 Networks

Association instability is a common phenomenon in dense networks. The decision of whether or not to perform a handoff between access points in an infrastructured IEEE 802.11 network is taken exclusively by the wireless client stations. Even without mobility, static client devices may decide to migrate to another access point with the goal of improving performance. However, the criteria used to perform handoffs are not defined by the IEEE 802.11 standard and, thus, are dependent on specific vendor implementations. In this paper, we use data from a real large scale network and run experiments to demonstrate that such implementations are commonly deficient, resulting in high levels of association instability in dense environments. By analyzing the implementation used by the most common devices, we were able to conclude that this instability, known as the “ping-pong effect”, results from the direct usage of RSSI samples which are highly variable. Finally, we analyze the behavior of RSSI in indoor environments showing that its time series presents multimodal distribution. We argue that the findings presented in this study can help develop more stable handoff algorithms for dense wireless networks.