Enterprise WiFi issues with macOS

Hi Everyone,

Long story short is that we're having trouble with macOS clients getting stuck on access points even when the client is reporting awful RSSI. The effect being that when a user moves around the office they won't switch to a stronger access point until after minutes with no throughout, obviously this is frustrating a good deal of people. If they toggle on/off their WiFi it connects to the preferred access point and their throughput is good to go.

I've seen this issue online specifically with macOS and there hasn't been a great solution that I've found and I'm getting desperate.

Hardware: Peplink Balance 710 core, 5x Peplink AP One access points

Context: Our network is WPA2 Personal, 5GHz only, and we've scanned channels several times and set static channels for each AP (we're in a very noisy environment with other business next to us, below us, and above us). We have about 150 clients in that office at the very most (typically less), and it's about 2500-3000 sq ft in the shape of an L.

We've tried setting the band to 20MHz and that helps roaming SOMEWHAT but then throughput can get pretty sketchy if there's a ton of people in the office. Putting it at 40MHz obviously makes throughput better but then the roaming issues persist. I feel like we've tried virtually everything with output power, client signal strength threshold (which as I'm sure you all know can be reported vastly different to the AP than the client), max number of clients.

I even found a setting for Macs that allows you to set the JoinMode to the strongest AP and we pushed out an ongoing script that makes sure that's set for all our macOS clients which can be found here. However I've also read that this has been built in to macOS since 10.10, so I'm not sure.

I completely understand that without seeing my environment and being here there's limited help available to me, and I'm ready to call a consultant or contractor to have a look, I just wanted to pick the brains of r/networking first to see if anyone has dealt with macOS in the enterprise before and has any pointers.

Happy to provide any additional information you need!