How to Set up two aps for seamless roaming

[schizophrenic]

Hi
Am stuck with a problem
Have a 3 floored building with a central stairwell. Around 3000 sqft per floor

Currently the ground and 2nd floor has two tenda aps wih individual wifi zones and the first floor has a dlink adsl router with its own zone. The dlink router ts the dhcp server

Problem
Even after bathing the building in glorious wifi still issues are happening
1. Clients are not roaming freely. They latch on to a network and hang on to it fordear life. So on a client connected on the ground floor keeps hanging on to a stray signal on the first floor
2. Device administration is a hassle

In an attempt to negate this i tried changing all ssids to the same.. but still the roaming is not smooth.. any tips on how to do this?

 

[whitestar_999]

I don't think it is possible using consumer grade equipment:
3 wireless AP's on a floor, how to switch seamlessly? - Wireless Networking | DSLReports Forums

reality: the IEEE 802.11 standard does not require that a client device (laptop, etc) choose the strongest signal from an access point (AP) among many with the same SSID on the same or different channels.

In practice: clients chose an AP and stay with it, as you move, until the signal is too weak to be usable. Even when there's a far better AP choice. Then another choosing session is done and there's no assurance which one will be selected.

An issue is: If the client were to start scanning to find a "better" AP when the one it is using is working, then the scan would add latency and slightly disrupt the on-going session.

The alternative: Give your APs different SSIDs. Tell your clients to use any of these SSIDs. The user can choose a given SSID knowing that it goes with the AP that's closest/best.

The professional grade systems overcome all this but you won't find that in consumer products.

 

[schizophrenic]

Hmm. I might just have to junk all of them and get ubiquitis then.