Configuring and managing Mobility Domain roaming 229

Nortel WLAN—Security Switch 2300 Series Configuration Guide

Effects of timers on roaming

An unsuccessful roaming attempt might be caused by the following timers. You cannot configure either timer.
Grace period. A disassociated session has a grace period of 5 seconds during which WSS Software can retrieve
and forward the session history. After 5 seconds, WSS Software clears the session, and its accounting is stopped.
MAC address search. If WSS Software cannot find the client’s MAC address in a Mobility Domain within
5 seconds, it treats the session as a new session rather than a roaming session.
In contrast, the 802.1X reauthentication timeout period has little effect on roaming. If the timeout expires, WSS
Software performs 802.1X processing on the existing association. Accounting and roaming history are unaffected when
reauthentication is successful, because the client is still associated with the same AP. If reauthentication fails, WSS
Software clears the session so it is not eligible for roaming.
If the client associates with the same AP, the session is recorded as a new session.
(To change the reauthentication timeout, see “Setting the 802.1X reauthentication period” on page 658.)

Monitoring roaming sessions

To monitor the state of roaming clients, use the show sessions network verbose command. For example, the following
command displays information about the sessions of a wireless client who roamed between the ports on a WSS.
The output shows that the client SHUTTLE\2\exmpl roamed from the AP connected to port 3 to the AP connected to
port 6 on the same WSS, and then roamed back to the AP connected to port 3.

WSS> show sessions network verbose

Client MAC: 00:06:25:13:08:33 GID: SESS-4-000404-98441-c807c14b
State: ACTIVE (prev AUTHORIZED)
now on: WSS 10.3.8.103, AP/radio 3/1, AP 00:0b:0e:ff:00:3a, as of 00:00:24 ago
from: WSS 10.3.8.103, AP/radio 6/1, AP 00:0b:0e:00:05:d7, as of 00:01:07 ago
from: WSS 10.3.8.103, AP/radio 3/1, AP 00:0b:0e:ff:00:3a, as of 00:01:53 ago

1 sessions total

(For more information about this command and the fields in the output, see the Nortel WLAN Security Switch 2300
Series Command Line Reference.)
U s e r N a m e S e s s I D I P o r M A C A d d r e s s V L A N N a m e P o r t / R a d i o
SHUTTLE
2 \e x m p l 6* 10.3.8.55 default 3/1