[MLB-WIRELESS] roaming between 2 AP's?

[Mike Everest]

Hi Mark,

That's the WiFi 'Holy Grail' - unfortunately there is no seamless method to
do it that is any current industry standard (that I *know* of ;-)

Most techniques to create a setup like that will usually cause a brief
interruption (maybe 10 or 20 seconds) to the wireless connection as the
client switches between the access points, yet some proprietry systems
implement it quite well.

So if your APs do not support any proprietary mesh then your best bet would
be to connect the two devices by WDS (i.e. the 'repeater' is NOT connected
to the lan by Ethernet port)

Alternatively, you can set them both in bridge mode (or at least bridged to
the LAN) and make them the same SSID, but unless the APs have some
additional smarts, you will probably want to run each one on a different
channel to avoid interference.

If you really want to go the whole hog, there are a few proprietary mesh
solutions - and some open source ones - around these days.  There are even a
few that are converging on something like a standard approach - but I'm not
fully up on where those are at these days ;-)

Personally, my favorite is developed by Mikrotik <disclosure>I like Mikrotik
so much that I import them and sell them in AU</disclosure> which is
technically "... based on Hybrid Wireless Mesh Protocol (HWMP) from IEEE
802.11s draft standard" for those who might have a technical interest in
this.

I've been experimenting with it just this week actually, with a gateway and
two mesh/repeaters.  If I can get it working, I may even bring them along to
the next meeting for a show-and-tell perhaps.

Cheers!

Mike.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: melbwireless-bounces at wireless.org.au [mailto:melbwireless-
> bounces at wireless.org.au] On Behalf Of Mark Aitken
> Sent: Tuesday, 4 November 2008 11:35 AM
> To: Melb Wireless
> Subject: [MLB-WIRELESS] roaming between 2 AP's?
> 
> Gday,
> 
> I have 2 AP's within my house,  one upstairs for my kids and one
> downstairs for me.
> 
> I would like to be able to have any wireless device connect to the best
> suited AP at the time,
> ie, roaming.
> 
> Is it just a matter of having the same SSID and Security Key and just
> let the laptop/pda just
> do it's thing or is there more to it?
> 
> Thanks for your time
> 
> Mark
> 
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