alt Hacker News> or being thrown into a reconnect loop when the AP tries to get them to roam
The AP does not have visibility into what the client actually sees, and no, a coordinator that has knowledge what the APs see isn't that much better.
Imagine a situation with two APs and a client being in the middle of the two in a RF-impeded situation (i.e. your typical office building). AP1 may "hear" the client better (i.e. it gets a higher RSSI and SNR), but the client may reject it in favor of AP2 because the client sees a better signal coming from AP2 due to reflections, a powerful RF signal from a floor above interfering with the channel of AP1 or God knows what else.
RF is a weird world.
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How much money do you have? Nokia's Centralized RAN basically solves for cellphones by not choosing between AP1 and AP2. The device yells out a packet, both radios hear it, and the signals are combined in baseband processing. Wifi 8 doesn't quite do this, maybe 9's gonna have it. Or the patents run out and the telecom networks cooperate and everything gets a cell modem.
I'm no RF expert, and we're not a big company. I wear many hats, from DBA to local WiFi expert. And while there are certainly limits to what can be achieved without dedicated experts, I want to stress how DECT in the very same scenario just delivers unwavering reliable operation without me ever giving a hoot about RF interference or 802.11k or r or any other implementation detail.