Understanding "Invalid FTE" Error with 802.11r Roaming
When investigating Fast Transition (FT) roaming issues in enterprise wireless networks, packet captures often hold the key to diagnosis. Let's analyze this specific roaming failure case where a client fails to roam from one access point to another. Problem Statement: Random Devices are facing FT roaming issue and requires reauthentication. While the problem statement sounds easy, capturing roaming failures could be challenging when the problem is random/intermittent. It is also important to know where to capture; Remember CWAP Guidelines? For roaming we need to capture near multiple AP's. In this case we used RUCKUS AP Remote PCAP feature to stream captures from multiple AP's to the Wireshark and Voila! We were lucky to capture the failure use case. Now lets see what does it look like: The packet captures shows us an "Invalid FTE (0x0037)" error. FTE stands for Fast Transition Element, a critical component of the 802.11r protocol that facilitates seaml...