Many people may be aware of the fact that older clients with statically configured base-rates (ex: original NA Nintendo Wii @ 1Mbit) won't be able to connect to networks where those minimum base rates are disabled. While this is a problem for older devices, I wasn't aware of the symptoms of Wi-Fi Direct policy on connectivity for some newer clients. Some clients experienced periodic disconnects and reassociations while others would not list the networks where Wi-Fi Direct policy was set to allow instead of "Disabled" (observed example: Roku Express).

Configuring the policy to "Disabled" "Ignores the Wi-Fi Direct status of clients thereby allowing Wi-Fi Direct clients to associate"¹. According to what I've seen on the Roku forums this appears to happen with TCL Roku's as well in the more secure "Xconnect-not-allow" mode².

In the Cisco WLC world this isn't too difficult to diagnose through process of elimination on AireOS 8.x but on controllers running IOS-XE 3.X the GUI configuration options are hidden and only accessible via CLI.

Controller(config-wlan)# shutdown
Controller(config-wlan)# no wifidirect policy
Controller(config-wlan)# no shutdown

¹www.cisco.com: Configuring the Wi-Fi Direct Client Policy
²forums.roku.com: TCL Roku TV - WiFi Direct - Enterprise Enviroment
³www.eit.lth.se: Wi-Fi Direct Services - Design and Investigation of an Emerging Wireless Technology, Authors: Jimmy Tieu, Sihan Ye
⁴help.unc.edu: Banned or Problematic Devices on the Residence Hall Network
⁵www.researchgate.net: Device-to-device communications with Wi-Fi Direct: overview and experimentation