Pixel 9 Pro Wifi Roaming Aggressiveness

[mccainmw]

I posted similar in a Google forum. I have had my Pixel 9 Pro for about 2 weeks now. My main complaint is Wi-fi roaming aggressiveness. I'm hoping there is a fix...or at least improvement.

- I have (2) Wi-fi 6E routers set up in mesh (1 upstairs and 1 downstairs). Tri-bands are set up with separate SSIDs, and the Pixel 9 Pro is connected on the 5GHz band (Wi-fi 6) for balance of range and performance. No issues with signal strength or speed when connected to initial AP.
- My issue is when I go upstairs or downstairs. The phone does not readily connect to the new AP. It stays connected to original/previous AP. The quickest way to connect to second router is to manually disconnect and reconnect...but I shouldn't have to do this. Sometimes, after a long time, it will sometimes switch routers. My wife's iPhone 16 does not have this problem. I pulled an old Pixel 2 out and checked it...it too struggles but seemed to switch a little better than the Pixel 9 Pro.

I'm not sure if issue is the phone or Android. Network connection settings are already very limited...roaming aggressiveness, DNS, etc. Is there something I can do to improve roaming aggressiveness? Also, while I'm on here...I saw where I could change DNS of the mobile connection...how do I select something for Wi-fi? Thanks in advance.

 

[PGrey]

Download a signal strength meter, one that give you a dBm value. From there, survey around the area between them, and note where the signal drops to >-70 dBm or so.
If this isn't the midpoint between the APs, turn one or both down a notch, in terms of transmission level (ideally also a dBm adjustment, but sometimes more along the lines of low-medium-high, depends on your AP setup).

Test again, and if your midpoint is at/about -70 dBm for both APs, you should be good to go. If not, adjust again, rinse-repeat, until you achieve roughly the -70 on both at overlap.

Do the same for 5 and 2.4, if you want both to roam similarly.

Now, go ahead and test your Pixel(s), they should now roam as expected.

I run Unifi gear (and deploy/manage several friends/family and have done a bit of SMB work in the past with this), and the two Pixels here roam almost perfectly, with things tuned appropriately.

 

[mccainmw]

Thanks...when I get some time I may tinker some more with router settings. The routers are Asus RT-AXE7800s if that matter...so not exactly high performance. They do include a "roaming assist" feature where I could supposedly drop connections when a client hit a certain dBM. However, other router owners confirmed (I tried it too) that the feature doesn't work. As you mention, the default was -70 dBM.

With Wi-fi 6E connections (6GHz) I had to put my routers a little closer than I would under Wi-fi 5 to maintain high bandwidth on my upstairs desktop computer. I have the Pixel on 5GHz Wi-fi 6 band.

As an example of what you may be referring to, if I connect the Pixel on the downstairs AP, it is around -40 dBM....very strong. When I go upstairs, it is usually around -65 to -68 dBM...still holding the downstairs AP. That is with the device right next to the closer AP. Even though the -70 dBM threshold isn't broken, my wife's phone will readily see that there is a much stronger signal on the same SSID and switch. The Pixel does not. I even tried setting the "roaming assist" feature to like -55 dBM...nothing changed...and other Asus router owners confirmed that they think that feature is a placebo....the client has to be the device to decide to switch.

Very inconvenient but I guess I"m still stuck manually switching APs by turning Wi-fi on and off for now. Hopefully Google will enable some roaming aggressiveness features in a future update.

 

[mccainmw]

I lowered the transmission power from "performance = highest" to "Good = 75%"...no luck. When my wife doesn't need it for work and I can do some more testing I'll see what happens if I lower it to "Balanced = 50%." As you said I had to do it for all three bands...2.4, 5, and 6.

 

[PGrey]

So if you have your signal strength meter running, when you get to the -70 dBm threshold on the outgoing (downstairs in your example), what does it show for the incoming AP signal? You'll want to use a signal strength tool that shows multiple APs, so you can view the transition (or lack thereof).
My P9PXL and my wife's P8P roams perfectly with -70 cutoffs, I've tested numerous times, whenever I end up needing to switch channels a bit and I've been using tunable gear for 9 years now (got frustrated with an old hybrid ASUS and Engenius AP setup at the time, moved to Unifi (just APs at the time with Cisco routing gear, now all Unifi, much simpler overall) and never looked back.
It's tricky to get the thresholds right with things like Low/Medium/High dBm transmission settings, does the ASUS gear these days have a "custom mode" of some sort, where you can adjust the transmission power up or down a single dBm at a time?
I would disable ANY feature like "roaming assist" as you mention, these are often counterproductive, IME, they try to do weird things like make the client think the signal is falsely lower than it is, which can really wreak havoc on roaming, IME.
With regards to the 6GHz side of things, this is where it gets MUCH trickier, depending on layout and size of sapce. If you want to have 6GHz in every room, be prepared to have an AP in at least every other room, sometimes every one, depending on the construction. We have 1 6Ghz AP and two 2.4/5 WiFi 6 APs in the middle/other side of the house. You can use 6 on one side, mostly, but not in the middle or other end. The 6 was mostly for testing purposes anyway, a good WiFi 6 setup gets PLENTY of throughput for almost any wireless client, but that's just my take, I suppose (not sure what I'd need >866 or so for on almost any scenario).
It's true that the client (Pixel in this case) makes the roaming decision, but if you can fine tune your setup it should roam between APs correctly, much the same as ours do.
Good luck, and you can get it tuned, probably with the equipment you have, I suspect, or possibly by using a couple of SMB APs, similarly, with the ASUS handling router duties only, it just depends.

 

[PGrey]

I should've noted that you'll need to tune the 2.4/5/6GHz radios independently, perhaps an obvious point, but one I didn't note. The 6E radios will (likely) need to be set near their highest (given your example layout) and whereas the 2.4/5 radios will need to be set to their own -70 dBm overlap thresholds.
It's a bit of a project, but when it's done things work very well...

 

[mccainmw]

First...thanks for actually acknowledging my issue and providing hel/recommendations. Here is what I have done so far. I have used Wifiman to look at signal strength(s)...it does show both APs and realtime signal strength.
- Routers are Asus RT-AXE7800s. I have separate SSIDs for 2.4, 5, and 6GHz bands. I learned almost immediately that band steering sucked in terms of putting the right equipment in the best bands.

- For the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands I set specific channels. I have an older Android streaming box that does not like DFS...so I had to set 5GHz band on a non-DFS channel. No other issues until now.

- I played around with the roaming assist function and it doesn't appear to do anything...so now I have it disabled. I have/had it set at -50db (and, yes, as you mention, I did that specifically on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. I have tried both 5GHz and 6GHz SSIDs and no difference...phone does not want to automatically shift to stronger AP...even when signal is showing as "Fair." I did a network reset as well...no difference. I also tried Adaptive connectivity on/off...no difference.
When connected to an original AP, it is like -30 - -40 db...i.e. nice and very strong connection. When I move downstairs/upstairs, I can see (in real-time) the signal strength drop. When I am right next to the other AP, the phone remains connected to the original AP at -65 - -73dB (on 5GHz band...worse on 6GHz as expected). The signal strength for the next AP also shows (and obviously much stronger) but phone does not want to switch to it automatically.

- I have router transmit power set to "Balanced" now and no change....actually my other devices seem to still be working well so I will leave it there for power/heat savings.

The Pixel 9 Pro is the only device failing to roam. iPhones, iPads, Kid's Fire Tablets, and even my old Pixel 2 are roaming well...and quickly. I don't get any "disconnects" so I don't think hardware has failed...is it that the firmware has such a high threshold and doesn't want to switch? I did see several posts of past Pixel 6s having this same issue. It could be newer Android thresholds?

 

[mustang7757]

One suggestion to try in settings under connection see if disabling adaptive connectivity will help

 

[mccainmw]

Thanks...I've tried toggling adaptive connectivity on and off...did nothing. I'm leaving it off for now as I read that it was more inclined to keep people on LTE than 5G. I also tried resetting my network settings again...no change either...and sent more feedback to Google. Right now, I almost wish there was an easy way to add a Wi-fi toggle to my home screen to save the number of touches if I'm going to have to manually do this throughout the house.

 

[mustang7757]

Thanks...I've tried toggling adaptive connectivity on and off...did nothing. I'm leaving it off for now as I read that it was more inclined to keep people on LTE than 5G. I also tried resetting my network settings again...no change either...and sent more feedback to Google. Right now, I almost wish there was an easy way to add a Wi-fi toggle to my home screen to save the number of touches if I'm going to have to manually do this throughout the house.

Yeah I would suggest leaving off for awhile

 

[SeeBeeEss]

While I can't help with what your issue might be, I can tell you that, in all likelihood, it isn't an Android issue. The reason I say that is that I have an eero mesh system with 3 Wi-fi 6 routers. My Pixel 8 Pro, with Android 15 (updated to Dec. 2024, using 5GHz and adaptive connectivity off) moves flawlessly between the 3 routers. Curiously, an iPhone 12, with iOS 18 (up to date and using 5GHz) rarely moves between AP's (the opposite scenario you and your wife are experiencing ).

I'm not certain how aggressive you feel the movement between AP's should be, but my P8P typically takes 60 to 120 seconds to move over to a new AP. This is acceptable for my use case.

Best of luck resolving your issue. Hopefully, knowing that you can probably eliminate Android as the culprit will help get you there quicker.

 

[PGrey]

First...thanks for actually acknowledging my issue and providing hel/recommendations. Here is what I have done so far. I have used Wifiman to look at signal strength(s)...it does show both APs and realtime signal strength.
- Routers are Asus RT-AXE7800s. I have separate SSIDs for 2.4, 5, and 6GHz bands. I learned almost immediately that band steering sucked in terms of putting the right equipment in the best bands.

- For the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands I set specific channels. I have an older Android streaming box that does not like DFS...so I had to set 5GHz band on a non-DFS channel. No other issues until now.

- I played around with the roaming assist function and it doesn't appear to do anything...so now I have it disabled. I have/had it set at -50db (and, yes, as you mention, I did that specifically on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. I have tried both 5GHz and 6GHz SSIDs and no difference...phone does not want to automatically shift to stronger AP...even when signal is showing as "Fair." I did a network reset as well...no difference. I also tried Adaptive connectivity on/off...no difference.
When connected to an original AP, it is like -30 - -40 db...i.e. nice and very strong connection. When I move downstairs/upstairs, I can see (in real-time) the signal strength drop. When I am right next to the other AP, the phone remains connected to the original AP at -65 - -73dB (on 5GHz band...worse on 6GHz as expected). The signal strength for the next AP also shows (and obviously much stronger) but phone does not want to switch to it automatically.

- I have router transmit power set to "Balanced" now and no change....actually my other devices seem to still be working well so I will leave it there for power/heat savings.

The Pixel 9 Pro is the only device failing to roam. iPhones, iPads, Kid's Fire Tablets, and even my old Pixel 2 are roaming well...and quickly. I don't get any "disconnects" so I don't think hardware has failed...is it that the firmware has such a high threshold and doesn't want to switch? I did see several posts of past Pixel 6s having this same issue. It could be newer Android thresholds?

Just to clarify, you want to adjust the transmit output of the radios (2.4/5/6 independently) such that IT (transmit power, not an artificial cut-off value) produces the -70 dBm values about halfway between two APs, the cut-off point.
This takes quite a bit of walking around, checking to see the relative strength of each, adjusting, re-checking, rinse-repeat. Here's a good video on how to do this on a Unifi setup (I didn't have much luck finding a great ASUS-AP tuning video, but I don't think this is really the target audience for this market segment - most consumers want set/forget).
If you set the AP/router/satellite/whatever to try to manage the connectivity, it'll hose the phones' ability to do so. I've seen people do this on even SMB systems, Unifi, Ruckus and others, where they try to use the min-RSSI to force the clients to roam, which pretty much makes a mess of the whole deal.
Here's an example of a decent tuning app, and a whole bunch to choose from: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=wifi roaming meter app&c=apps&hl=en-US

Set the cut-offs, carefully, and the phone will roam great, IME, slightly allowing for some tolerance on the 6GHz radios (not nearly as mature at this point).

My parents both have Pixels as well (shocker, as a mostly-ex s/w engineer and tech-PM I'm a big Android fan), and I've tuned their system exactly corresponding, remotely, by having them walk around with a mobile tuning app and telling me the results, if you want to envision a more "complex" tuning situation...