Roaming Operation Guidelines for Infrastructure BSS Networks

Important  The Native 802.11 Wireless LAN interface is deprecated in Windows 10 and later. Please use the WLAN Device Driver Interface (WDI) instead. For more information about WDI, see WLAN Universal Windows driver model.

 

When roaming within an infrastructure basic service set (BSS) network, the miniport driver and 802.11 station must follow the general guidelines defined in General Roaming Operation Guidelines.

In addition, the miniport driver and 802.11 station must follow these guidelines for roaming operations within an infrastructure BSS network:

• The miniport driver initiates an association operation with access points (APs) from the candidate list of BSS networks. For more information about the candidate list, see BSS Network Candidate List.

  The miniport driver must enclose the association operation between NDIS_STATUS_DOT11_ASSOCIATION_START and NDIS_STATUS_DOT11_ASSOCIATION_COMPLETION indications. For more information about the association operation, see Association Operations.

• The 802.11 station must successfully associate with no more than one AP during the roaming operation. The miniport driver must complete the roaming operation after the 802.11 station successfully associates with an AP within the infrastructure BSS network.

The following figure shows the sequence of events when the 802.11 station attempts to successfully associate with an AP in an infrastructure network during the roaming operation.