Iwconfig obsolete, is there a sensitivity setting for IW?

Question

Older versions of linux used:

iwconfig dev sens -80

To set the roam sensitivity, after the signal dropped below the set threshold, the card/adapter would initiate a scan looking for another AP to roam to.

I'm being told that iwconfig has been obsoleted in favor of using IW for cards that use mac/cfg80211.

This answer from Grawity seems to confirm that: iwconfig command not showing abgn

The IW man page isn't really of any help: https://linux.die.net/man/8/iw

This wiki has alot of information, but nothing on sensitivity: https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/documentation/iw

It's rare that I have to do this at all, but every once and a while I get sticky linux clients trying to hold on to an AP long after they should have roamed. I prefer installing Atheros based wireless cards if that makes any difference.

So the question comes down to: Does anyone know of any way to perform some CLI wizardry to set the "roam agressivness" with iw from the command prompt?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

iw apparently has no equivalent for the sensitivity threshold. The article Deprecated iwconfig commands for the sub-command iwconfig [interface] sens [threshold], only says this in the Replacement column : "Not apparent".

A non-CLI vaguely alternative setting is found in the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wireless.

You can set in this file the parameter SENS=1|2|3 for selecting the sensitivity level of the access point, although not with the same precision as with iwconfig.

For example documentation, see for Red Hat the article Setting Up a Wireless LAN:

SENS — You can select the sensitivity level of the access point. SENS can be set to 1 (low density), 2 (medium density), 3 (high density). The default is 1. The sensitivity threshold has an impact on roaming.