Roaming Policy Property

The roaming policy property determines how aggressively the badge attempts to roam as the signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio of the transmission from an access point deteriorates.

The badge assesses the SNR in terms of the SNR metric. For more information, refer to Acceptable Voice Quality. The badge begins to look for another access point when the SNR value drops to a level specified by the Roaming Policy value.

The roaming policy value is an integer from 1 to 5, where 1 specifies the least aggressive roaming and 3,4, and 5 are the most aggressive. By default, the roaming policy is set to 2.

The following table shows the relationship between badge SNR values and roaming policy. It also provides the typical SNR values at which the badge initiates roaming. Vocera recommends that you set the roaming policy property on Vocera badges to a value that is appropriate for your RF cell size. For example, if access points are densely deployed, you may need to increase the roaming policy property to 3.

Roaming Policy Value	Typical B3000n/B3000 SNR when Roaming	Description
1	18	This is the lowest value used since voice quality is maintained when roaming is initiated.
2	20	This is the default value that initiates roaming while voice quality is good on most networks.
3	22	This value initiates roaming while voice quality is high. This value usually causes roaming that is too aggressive, but it may help roaming on a network with densely deployed APs. For information about data rates, refer to Overlapping Cells and Data Rates.
4	24	This value initiates very aggressive roaming behavior and would not be used normally in a typical deployment.
5	26	This value represents the highest available policy value and should be used only in conjunction with guidance from Vocera Technical Support when investigating roaming performance.

Note: The actual SNR values may vary slightly, due to environmental factors and dynamic changes in coverage.

If you are not satisfied with the roaming behavior of the badge and want to adjust the roaming policy property, contact Vocera Technical Support.

To specify the roaming policy property, use the Badge Properties Editor (BPE) to set the roaming policy property to the appropriate value on all badges. For more information on setting roaming policy, refer to Vocera Badge Configuration Guide.