The “Successful Connects” QoE metric indicates the number of connections that succeeded in passing all the Authorization, Association, DHCP, and Portal phases when a client connects to an Access Point.

There is no threshold value applied to this QoE metric, as it is just a counter that increases over time.

The “Successful Connects” metric tracks failures in the following four phases:

  • Association - Once authentication is complete, clients can associate with an Access Point for full network access. Association allows the Access Point to register each client so that frames are delivered correctly.

  • Authorization - The phase during which the system uses the access control rules to decide whether access requests from (authenticated) consumers shall be approved (granted) or disapproved (rejected).

  • DHCP - The phase where clients obtain a DHCP lease for an IP address, a subnet mask, and various DHCP options from DHCP servers in a four-step process:

    1. DHCP DISCOVER: The client broadcasts a request for a DHCP server. 

    2. DHCP OFFER: DHCP servers on the network offer an address to the client. 

    3. DHCP REQUEST: The client broadcasts a request to lease an address from one of the offering DHCP servers. 

    4. DHCP ACK: The DHCP server that the client responds to acknowledges the client, assigns it any configured DHCP options, and updates its DHCP database. The client then initializes and binds its TCP/IP protocol stack and can begin network communication.

  • Portal - The failure occurred in the Captive Portal phase.