Wireless Roaming?

BaileyBob

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Hi,

What is the best way to set up seamless wifi roaming as i have read differnt ways and unsure on which is correct or best.

Do i need WDS on the access point?

Any help appreciated

Thanks

Bailey
 
Configure all your Access Points so they have the same SSID, security/encryption type, passphrase, etc. Basically everything "wifi" needs to be the same except the radio channels.

You shouldn't need WDS.

You can have all AP's on the same radio channel, but thence they would "interfere" with each other and throughput would go down a bit. Set each AP on separate channels from the set 1,6,11 avoids this. And of course, the AP's coverage areas need to overlap.

Roaming decisions are made by the client, not the AP's. Some clients will doggedly hang on to an AP until it has to roam, some will constantly hunt for the best AP, some have a setting in the NIC called "roaming agressiveness" or something similar which allows you to exact a degree of control.

Thus far I've never seen it work entirely "seamlessly" - there's always a blip of a second or so. Fine if you're just surfing web pages, but just be aware of that if you expect to run around the house streaming video.
 
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Thanks for the reply mikevh,

From what i have been reading thats seems to be the most common way but some people are saying leave on the same channel as it would be more "seamless roaming"??

Think i'm going to give it a go and use some Netgear 602 AP, they do their job and are pretty stable. Nothing too fancy.

Thanks for your help.
 
definately not the same channel

its same SSID, passphrase, security type and different channel ...thats whats taught in every wireless network design exam, and how its supposed to work by design

how "seamless" the handover is, can be dependant on many factors...on later wireless standards there are some additions for fast handover, to enable VoIP calls over wi-fi etc, but as pointed out, its mostly done in the clients
 

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