Ask Slashdot: How Do You Deploy Small Office Wi-Fi SSIDs? 172
First time accepted submitter junkfish writes "I am not able to install a controller based Wi-Fi solution in my office due to cost, but I like presenting my users with a single SSID rather than an array of four or five differently named SSIDs from different access points. What is your experience deploying multiple wireless access points with the same SSID and password? I have been doing this with Cisco 1040 series Access Points this year, and have had good success. It seems like the client is able to determine which AP is best to connect to, and is able to roam around the office without too much of an interruption when it connects to a different AP. Is this sloppy practice? Or does the general state of the 802.11 provide for this sort of resiliency? I am really interested in your opinion because I have not seem too much documented on this subject."
I've seen it work (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen it work with multiple AP's in an office that all had the same SSID. Just cloned the boxes (some cheap Cisco thing, can't remember the part number) and never had any issues with conflicts.
Unifi (Score:5, Informative)
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This guy has it. I think the Unifi setup rivals the cost of their other ap's, too, like the Bullet M2 HP and the PicoStation (best outdoor AP for the $). Even better is that as of AirOS 5.5, multiple VLANs are supported. This gets a bit whacky thanks to their vague user-manual and uninformative GUI but is well worth it given the cost and good customer service. It takes some playing around with to understand how they do the VLAN tagging.
To properly configure client roaming between the AP's, simply name them
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Re:Unifi (Score:5, Informative)
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Indeed, you should be fine! A single SSID across all access points is the way to go but, as the Cisco 1040 series seem to be 802.11n your choice of channels is limited.
Make sure you only use channel 1, 6 or 11 as the others overlap [wikipedia.org] which can confuse clients; you are better off having two of your five arrays on identical channels than overlapping them. Just try to keep the access points with identical channels a reasonable distance apart, so that there is an obvious difference in signal strength.
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Indeed, you should be fine! A single SSID across all access points is the way to go but, as the Cisco 1040 series seem to be 802.11n your choice of channels is limited.
Make sure you only use channel 1, 6 or 11 as the others overlap [wikipedia.org] which can confuse clients; you are better off having two of your five arrays on identical channels than overlapping them. Just try to keep the access points with identical channels a reasonable distance apart, so that there is an obvious difference in signal strength.
I couldn't agree more on this. In the past I worked for a small college, and we were having terrible performance issues with a brand new Colubris (now HP) setup. After turning the broadcast power down on each of the APs, we still had clients jumping from AP to AP. After a lot of head scratching and bringing in a professional WLAN analysis contractor, we found that all of the APs were on channel 6. Adjusting them to a pattern to break this up cleaned up all of the issues for us.
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You adjusted the power before changing the channels? That's like...wireless 101! (However I may be biased, having worked for an ISP).
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Ahhhhh yes, that does actually make more sense. "Auto" apparently means "6" in most routers.
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Does it work mixing G and N access points? (Score:1)
If an office network mixes brands, models, and 802.11g access points with 802.11n access points, is it still best practice to have them share SSIDs?
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Why not get a couple routers, set up DD-WRT and use WDS. That's what it's there for and it's simple to configure.
I thought it was standard (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I thought it was standard (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, that is the biggest mistake no-name wireless installers and IT consultants (i.e. the guy installed a wireless AP in his house and now he's an expert) do with small businesses is they use different SSIDs and WEP keys for each access point. It is extremely annoying. Use the same SSID and the same WEP/WAP key for each access point. In the 802.11X standard, it is the responsibility of the wireless client to automatically determine which AP is best and automatically switch and potentially hop channels. You will want slight overlap of the wireless zones, but don't place them too far away or to close to each other. Be aware of any areas where a "firewall" is installed (not an electronic firewall, but a wall with extra insulation that protects different areas from spreading fire) and plan APs accordingly. One you place the APs with approximate locations, do a slow walk-around with your laptop and use airsnort [shmoo.com] to get signal strengths and tweak AP location before physically installing them in the ceiling or walls or wherever. A popular thing for businesses with the removable ceiling tiles is to cut a small hole in the tile and let the APs antenna(e) point downwards in to the actual normal airspace. Of course, this typically requires running power in to the crawlspace somehow.
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I've actually had reasonable luck with AP's above the drop ceiling without putting the antennas through.
But otherwise this is exactly how I do it. AP's are spread throughout the building, all the same SSID & WAP cred. I do use different channels in different areas, and it doesn't seem to confuse the wireless clients.
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I use gear than can run on POE when I set up something above the ceiling tile
Re:I thought it was standard (Score:5, Insightful)
Be aware of any areas where a "firewall" is installed (not an electronic firewall, but a wall with extra insulation that protects different areas from spreading fire) and plan APs accordingly.
You know a website (viz Slashdot) is geeky when quotation marks have to go around the original meaning of the word firewall.
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Something that doesn't seem to have been mentioned explicitly is that DHCP has to be turned off on all access points/wireless routers. There must be only one central DHCP server for the entire network.
But as mentioned, this is part of the spec. I only realised the same thing last year though, so it was nice to be able to remove my 4 different SSIDs from my home network and just use one.
The only down side is that it isn't obvious which AP is in use by any particular device (g or n) or if any AP has died. But
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Re:I thought it was standard (Score:4, Interesting)
I do it this way with two cheap Linksys access points. Same SSID, same pass-phrase, different channels. MAC filtering enabled.
Having to occasionally update the MAC filter list twice isn't much of a labor. Thou depending on how many access points you have and how often you have to make changes would depend on how boring that might get.
Why use MAC filtering?
It does nothing to stop someone that's interested in joining your network - if they can hack your WPA key (or steal it from someone's desk), the MAC is not an impediment at all -- it's broadcast in plain text.
All MAC filtering does is keep honest users off your network, but if they are that honest, they probably aren't going to get on your network in the first place.
If you're looking for security, setup a RADIUS server and use 802.1x authentication instead of PSK.
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Unless your company is a large international one then targeted WPA hacking is for any other purpose than free internet is probably not a concern. What you should worry about is former employees borderline psychopaths that you somehow have shown up. (You'd be surprised how often psychopaths show up in a corporate environment.)
The kind of people that will try to actually hurt your company will probably try to get hold of the key by non-technical means, for example by stealing a binder or going through the com
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"You'd be surprised how often psychopaths show up in a corporate environment."
funny, I thought that was where all psychopaths wind up
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(You'd be surprised how often psychopaths show up in a corporate environment.)
You could do some extra filtering at the door of the top floor.
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So, rather than useless MAC filtering, how about doing what's sane and secure: run WPA2-Enterprise and require users to use 802.1x to get on your wireless network. You're either authing user/pass against a RADIUS server (which can hit corporate AD or LDAP) or authing the client cert against an internal CA revocation list, or both. Someone leaves? Invalidate their cert and disable their account. Problem solved.
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Unless your company is a large international one then targeted WPA hacking is for any other purpose than free internet is probably not a concern. What you should worry about is former employees borderline psychopaths that you somehow have shown up. (You'd be surprised how often psychopaths show up in a corporate environment.) ...
MAC filtering can very will be useful to protect the network in those cases but should never be the only method.
If you're worried about psychopath employees, why would you use something as ineffectual as MAC filtering when there is a much more secure method that will actually work (802.1x) to keep him out of your network?
Would you tape a sheet over the front doorway to keep out a psychopathic employee, or would you install a security door? The sheet may keep someone out, but the security door is much more likely to do so.
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oh and btw "The Other Tower" DOES NOT COUNT for a soho biz use different zip codes (far ends of both) as you get bigger then you land up with London New York and Beijing as your backup sites.
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If you're looking for security, setup a RADIUS server and use 802.1x authentication instead of PSK.
Not to get nitpicky, but it's Slashdot and we're supposed to know better. The standard is 802.1X, not 802.1x. Capital letters for stand-alone standards, lowercase for addendums to a standard. Case matters, people.
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If you're looking for security, setup a RADIUS server and use 802.1x authentication instead of PSK.
Not to get nitpicky, but it's Slashdot and we're supposed to know better. The standard is 802.1X, not 802.1x. Capital letters for stand-alone standards, lowercase for addendums to a standard.
Case matters, people.
Welll, it doesn't really matter, except to pedants. There should never be a case (no pun intended) where two different projects differ only in the case of the letters, so no one will be confused when they look up 802.1x instead of 802.1X.
Apple (Score:1)
The Airport Extreme's seem to handle this fine. I setup several using the same SSID to extend the signal.
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Compared to most of the cheap crap you find out there, they're remarkably stable and do have high performance. I've had various Buffaloes and Linksyses, and even with various forms of WRT, they tend to die and need a reboot eventually.
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(Same as grandparent AC, too lazy to login)
Your qualitative observation has no more value than mine, and my experience is that there's an Airport Extreme in my office that I have to reboot at least once a week. I've had very similar experiences with high end consumer and SOHO products almost uniformly and regardless of brand.
Apple needing its own goofy management app with no provision for configuration by HTTP is particularly annoying though.
Ubiquiti Wireless (Score:3, Interesting)
I would highly encourage you to look at the Ubiquiti UniFi system. Software based centralized computer and basic APs are only $66. We're switching to them from Cisco and have been very happy.
http://www.ubnt.com/unifi
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They are pretty good, but really work just the same way as the OP described.
Unifi offers a pretty convenient way to monitor and configure a larger number of access points without anywhere near the cost or infrastructure required with a controller.
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Not everything that runs on Linux is open source.
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I wouldn't hire anyone using the word "Windoze".
You know, professionalism, yadda yadda.
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well, I wouldnt hire anyone citing 'professionalism' as justification for anything. Fallacious ' reasoning' is the cornerstone of passive- aggressive office politics.
Re:Ubiquiti Wireless (Score:5, Informative)
It's available for linux, go to the forums at their site, the UniFi section and look at any version announcement. They even have a Debian/Ubuntu repo, if you're on RHEL/CentOS you just grab a tarball and install the mongodb bits yourself.
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I use their cameras. The cameras are OK (not awesome), but the management software just plain SUCKS. You can't schedule it to auto-delete old recordings! So you can't have a "set it and forget it" thing.
But, their linux support is fantastic. I can't believe "apt-get install airvision airvision-nvr" JUST WORKED. Impressive.
Oh, and their 900Mhz APs.. man, that is awesome. I have two locations 1 km apart with a couple 8-10 stories tall buildings right in the path, and I get a steady signal. At only 6mbit, it
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their software is actually zoneminder with a pretty skin
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Adding another vote for UniFi. I took a shot on them because they were cheap, basically a last chance for Ubiquiti as I had been burned by a lack of support on the RouterStation Pro a few years back. So far it's turned out to be a good choice. I have two customers running six APs each who are very happy with them, another rolling out nine (they're offered in a discounted three-pack, so multiples of three are a matter of convenience).
The "controller" package is only really used for configuration, firmware
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This.
Just last month I picked up a 3-pack from newegg for like $130. Install took minutes and the system automatically configured and updated firmware as I deployed the APs.
I was considering Cisco mainly because I wanted something reliable, but couldn't get myself to buy their software and certainly didn't want to battle IOS just for a few WAPs.
If a portion of your building needs better coverage, add another. The Unifi software will automatically detect it and with one click 'adopt' it into your existing WA
It sorta hands off, but not by design. (Score:1)
What you are talking about will work fine in smaller offices. As far as I can tell, though, there is no handover when a signal is poor, only when it is lost. The laptop will stay connected to whatever the original access point is until it can not contact it anymore. If the distance increases after initial connection and the signal becomes crappy, it won't automatically connect to a closer AP until the original connection drops completely.
That said, Cisco does make some equipment that handles that, I believe
Set up (Score:1)
Is there any other way? (Score:4, Informative)
Is there another way to do it? I've always set office (and my home) Wifi networks up like this -- as long as the AP's are all on the same subnet, roaming among them should be fairly transparent.
Try to use non-overlapping channels as much as possible. (i.e. channel 1 at the east end of the office, channel 6 in the middle and channel 11 at the west end). If you can't use non-overlapping channels, some tuning of power levels to prevent interference between nodes can help -- i.e. if you have a long office with 4 nodes on 3 channels: [1, 6, 11, 1] you may see better performance if you turn down the transmit levels on the two channel 1 nodes so they don't interfere with each other as much. And dual-band 802.11n can help even more both because there's more channels on 5Ghz, and because the 5Ghz signals will be attenuated more.
In my current office, I have about 120 Wifi nodes (through a Cisco WLAN controller), all are broadcasting the same SSID.
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ubiquity. makes acess points that will mesh without a controller, they are cheap too (about $90 each).
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You can stagger on the low bands to avoid overlapping channels, or if the machines are modern, and support N-high, then use the non-adjacent N channels for even wider, non-overlapping support. Using N-high as your propose is a great idea, and forcing users to N if their hardware uniformly supports it, will speed the hell out of the network; make sure you have sufficient backhaul for the traffic, which could get huge. Also make sure you stagger DHCP IP address ranges to help preserve sessions.
Sadly, some RPC
Already Answered (Score:1)
Answered already but it is build into the protocol.
http://superuser.com/questions/122441/multiple-access-points-for-the-same-ssid
Old PC + pfSense (Score:1, Interesting)
Why not install pfSense on an old PC (Pentium 4-class is more than enough) with a couple of NICs and the FreeRADIUS 2 module? Put the APs in bridged mode and set up 802.1x authentication.
If you didn't want to use self-signed certs and a private CA, your only cost would be for certificate purchases/renewals. The cost is negligible if you count your staff IT hours as costing you nothing.
Re:Old PC + pfSense (Score:5, Informative)
PC Cost vs electricity dependent on country (Score:2)
Because the power to run a Pentium 4 for 2 years would cost more than getting a modern little embedded box.
It is in some countries with heavily subsidized electricity and high import tarifs.
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I'm an admin with several 5508 controllers. They do a whole lot more than 802.1x authentication (hands-off coverage management, rogue detection, fast roaming w/o client reauth, etc). But on a budget, FreeRADIUS is a great solution and your 1040's will support it. It's a very bad idea to use anything except WPA2-Enterprise (essentially 802.1x with CCMP) in an office environment since TKIP is broken and using pre-shared keys is a management nightmare. 802.1x gives you the ability to grant and revoke network a
One SSID Different Channels (Score:1)
afaik you need to choose one SSID and one password for all the access point, but you should configure them to different channels so they dont interfere with each other. With this setup the client should choose automatically the best access point and roam to the next when he moves to another room.
Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
Without a controller (Score:3)
the options are limited. You can use the same SSID on the various APs (separating channels as mentioned). So long as the clients are all on the same vlan (usually a DHCP scope), it will work reasonably well. Most of the protocols are fairly forgiving. If you have WDS capability, by all means use it.
802.1x adds complications, but if you have a RADIUS type server a WLAN controller should be a more realistic consideration.
Ubiquity Networks (Score:1)
I've done this very successfully with DDWRT (Score:1)
I'm running this configuration in a small office right now with two WRT-54GL routers running DDWRT.
Really great setup, and works seamlessly as I go back and forth between the two offices.
One of the wireless units acts as the router, the other acts as simply an access point and forward's it's traffic to the router over an ethernet cable.
Super simple to setup, the only trick is to make sure that the two units are on different channels.
The cost for both units was less than $100 and the hardest thing was having
It'll Just work..... (Score:5, Informative)
Set the SSID the same for each AP. Set them on different channels so that the AP's don't "step on" each other's bandwidth. Roaming is a station-side (client in common usage) decision, so your PCs will automatically pick the AP with the best signal strength.
As far as authentication goes, this all depends on the AP. All should support PSK (preshared secret keys, aka passwords) and in that scenario, set them all to the same value on each AP. The PSK should be at least 24 characters long, and the SSID for the net unique to keep the security at acceptable levels and reduce the possibility of offline dictionary attacks against the PSK.
Assuming the APs support it, Enterprise grade authentication with individual per-user passwords is within reach at little to no cost. You can tie into Active Directory or set up a free AS (Authentication Server) using FreeRadius on a linux box. The definitive reference for doing this with an MS server is a book titled "Deploying Secure 802.11 Wireless Networks with Microsoft Windows". Make sure you check for updates to the book online, and there is an appendix which details how to set it all up in a lab environment, which will let you prove principle without screwing with the production network.
Google around and you will find loads of information on how to do this with Open Source, the key articles being some from Linux Journal from about 6-8 years ago.
Hope this Helps......
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Perhaps you can help clear up a debate that has been happening on and off for years.
Is it really necessary to space the channels so far apart? It seems to be a conventional wisdom that flies in the face of the intent of the standard. Sure, the spectrum does overlap somewhat, but isn't the protocol and the air interface designed to handle this situation gracefully?
It sure does in the city where we have multiple APs coming in five-by-five on each and every channel.
Thanks in advance!
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Perhaps you can help clear up a debate that has been happening on and off for years.
Is it really necessary to space the channels so far apart? It seems to be a conventional wisdom that flies in the face of the intent of the standard. Sure, the spectrum does overlap somewhat, but isn't the protocol and the air interface designed to handle this situation gracefully?
It sure does in the city where we have multiple APs coming in five-by-five on each and every channel.
Thanks in advance!
The collision avoidance protocol works most efficiently when the devices sharing the spectrum are on the same channel. Having to content with partially overlapping interferes is not going to improve the spectrum usage.
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Set the APs on non-overlapping channels or the same channel. That's what the original poster meant by 1, 6 and 11.
1 - 11 represent frequency slots, but the signal bandwidth is much wider than one slot.
A transmission centered on channel 4 would overlap with a transmission centered on channel 6 for example.
1, 6 and 11 correspond to the low, high and middle frequencies of the 2.4GHz unlicensed band.
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The standard has been through many amendments and revisions with numerous different physical layer specifications of varying bandwidth. So a fine grained frequency specifier is appropriate to work with all RF phys (there was one IR phy).
Really the question should be why present users with the low level frequency channel number as a choice in a user centric UI? Why not just ask 'low, middle or high' and map it to 1, 6 and 11 for 11b or 11n on 2.4GHz unless they switch on 'advanced' mode.
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Perhaps you can help clear up a debate that has been happening on and off for years.
Is it really necessary to space the channels so far apart? It seems to be a conventional wisdom that flies in the face of the intent of the standard. Sure, the spectrum does overlap somewhat, but isn't the protocol and the air interface designed to handle this situation gracefully?
It sure does in the city where we have multiple APs coming in five-by-five on each and every channel.
Thanks in advance!
I am not expert, but I do believe that the channels are kept apart by as much as possible because any given channel can use enough bandwidth to overlap a couple channels next to it. Hence having as big a gap allows best utilization of each channel.
Wikipedia's Wifi Limitations section [wikipedia.org] explains it better:
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Or in other words, is the SSID enough to ensure an AP "unicity"? (and having all APs with the same SSID makes clients "believe" they access the same point)
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It's part of the standard, and I know, cause I helped write it.
A-HA! There's the culprit!
It's not just him. I was there as well. The difference is that over several years roaming IEEE 802, I managed to remove more text from the specs than I added. This is probably my biggest contribution to society.
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It's part of the standard, and I know, cause I helped write it.
A-HA! There's the culprit!
It's not just him. I was there as well. The difference is that over several years roaming IEEE 802, I managed to remove more text from the specs than I added. This is probably my biggest contribution to society.
I was going to say that RedLeg comment was very cool but yours is awesome ;-)
One SSID is best practice. (Score:5, Informative)
Controllers came well after AP's were invented, so people had to solve this problem for years without them as an option at all. Multiple AP's sharing the same SSID and key is exactly how the standard was designed, and was the best practice for deployment for many years. The short answer is, it works great, and is how you should be deploying.
For the long answer, you have to understand what happens when a user needs to switch AP's, and how the controllers improve that process. When a client wants to switch from one AP to another it must dissociate from the first, associate with the second which includes exchanging new session keys, gratuitous ARP to inform the L2 network, and then carry on. This process typically takes between 100-500ms, depending on the client, AP, and random luck. For most users doing most things this is all fine, if you're browsing the web and chatting on IM it's a non-issue.
However, for some clients like VoIP phones and video chat a 100-500ms pause is a disaster. Enter the controller solution. The WiFi protocol was divided between things that require hardware (transmitting at the right time, rf modulation, etc) and things that were all in software, just on the AP like exchanging key material. The hardware kept doing the hardware things, but the software activities were moved to the controller. The advantage is that the entire session does not need to be torn down, the radio can switch AP affinity (BSSID) while using the same key material since the key material is tunned back to the controller from both AP's. A client can now switch AP's in 10-50ms, which for most VoIP apps and video conferencing means seamless connections.
Note to the pedantic: yes, there are some other details, controllers enable triangulation features and some other RF analysis, there are a few protocol nits I omitted, and this omits a lot of important design considerations like proper AP placement and channel selection.
Now, go back to the requirements. If you don't deploy WiFi VOIP phones, and don't have other real time streams, controllers may be a total waste of your money. If the goal is to get users e-mail and web access when sitting in the conference room or courtyard, vendors are selling something not needed when they push controllers.
Second note to the pedantic: Controllers can make networks scale better, so if you're deploying 25+, or more likely 100+ AP's my previous paragraph doesn't apply, but that's not what most people reading this are doing.
So to the OP, yes, put them on the same channel. For less than 10 AP's with no real time requirements it is the best practice, and a perfectly valid way to deploy a WiFi network. A controller may be able to get some advanced features (auto-channel management, threat detection, triangulation), but in most small businesses they are features that would rarely if ever be used. There are thousands of WiFi networks deployed without controllers that work quite well. Do read a good document on how to place AP's and select channels, you'll want to use non-overlapping channels in a grid pattern and try and get it to where clients can always see 2-3 AP's, no more, no less.
If you really want a controller, there are some lower cost options than the big players. Ubiquity has a nice solution in their UniFi line, and Netgear now offers an appliance based controller. Aruba has several mid priced offerings. They don't all have the features of say high end Cisco gear, but offer a lower cost solution.
Re:One SSID is best practice.- make a channel plan (Score:1)
I'm with you right up to using the same channel. Hell no! This is suicide. Avoid co-channel interference.
Lay out your wifi install and figure out your channel plan. Survey for placement. I have several sites where RRM did a horrid job, and I've had to statically assigned channels to get performance up. Cisco design docs are available, google is your friend [cisco.com].
While WPA2/PSK works, and I use it at home for a 3 AP network, you actually can get faster roaming using 802.1X with key caching between APs.
Many client
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Oh crap, totally missed that in my proof reading. It should have said "put them on the same SSID", not channel.
I 100% agree that a proper channel plan is necessary using non-overlapping channels. And you're right that 802.1x caching can help.
Folks, mod up, not down the AC post I'm replying to, he's right and I made an important typo.
Why? (Score:2)
Why write off a proper wireless network right away?
http://www.ubnt.com/unifi [ubnt.com] I can put in a 4 AP managed system with a cheap PC as the controller for less than the cost of ONE stand alone Cisco AP.
Plus it's better quality that anything you can buy from Dlink, Cisco, etc...
Couple of other points about controllers.. (Score:1)
as everyone's stated, what you've done so far is correct.. IMHO, controllers are well worth the money - though shop around, cause (again, IMHO) juniper and cisco are way too expensive for what they are.
What a controller will give you is a unified simple way of managing it all. I.e. configure it in one spot rather then every AP. They also often include things like portals, authentication services and firewalls. I.e. a central CA for using certificate based auth, a captive wifi portal for open access points t
I did it with cheap Linksys APs once... (Score:1)
It just works (Score:2)
You are able to install a controller based Wi-Fi.. (Score:2)
I am not able to install a controller based Wi-Fi solution in my office due to cost...
Yes, you are.
Check out UniFi by Ubiquity Networks [ubnt.com] - they're cheaper than you think (in the same ballpark as premium consumer wifi gear) and the controller is a software instance you can run on just about anything. Management is through a web browser and is dead easy.
The wifi networks have great throughput, the Pro access points have 3x3 MIMO, and they're stable and reliable.
You also get some other good features, such as traffic analysis and reporting, a captive portal for guests that can either use tickets
Aruba instant (Score:1)
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In my opinion this is only good solution proposed so far. With Instant one gets most benefits of controller based solution without actually purchasing controller.
Open-Mesh (Score:1)
We've started using Open-Mesh https://www.open-mesh.com/ [open-mesh.com] . It's cloud controlled which means the AP require internet access. It's also a mesh so it can be used for areas without a network connection or the mesh can continue working in the event a line does dead. For our budget conscious clients it definitely fits the bill.
If you still looking for a cheap controller (Score:1)
You could have a look at FortiWifi ( http://www.fortinet.com ).
A FortiWifi that acts both AP and controller and additional Forti AP's to get the coverage needed.
Why can't afford? (Score:1)
You can try ubiquiti solutions. They provide controller which you can install on any PC (Linux or Windows) and run cheap APs. We do it for our hotspots and it works great
OpenWRT (Score:2)
Use OpenWRT assuming you have compatible wifi routers, then you can set up seamless single-SSID with ease.
Correct answer is... (Score:1)
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This is for when the access points don't have a wired ethernet backhaul, so you can use WDS to interconnect them with wireless. From OP post it seems that he already has the APs interconnected, therefore WDS is not needed at all.
Re:WDS (Score:5, Informative)
WRONG!
This is *NOT* what WDS was designed to do. There seems to be quite a lot of people under the impression that if you want multiple access points co-operating with one another such that clients can roam between them seemlessly, you need WDS. Not sure where that came from but its got nothing to do with that.
WDS is about peer-to-peer AP connections such the data is travelling wirelessly between access points, and while WDS can be the "backbone" of a seemlessly-roaming SSID-consistent WiFi network, its an inherently flawed system. This is typically used for places where you need to bridge networks wirelessly when you cant put down a cable (for eg, you might have two offices across the road from one another).
WDS will also chew up a considerable amount of wifi bandwidth doing this (and the problem gets exponentially worse as you add more AP's/clients).
The point being though that WDS wasnt designed for the purposes of providing distributed access to a wifi network with a single SSID, but to allow AP's to also be clients to each other while still being AP's.
Ultimately the way the guy describes his setup is the correct method of deployment, multiple AP's with the same SSID and encryption parameters, thats all there is to it.
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At the time of writing the original 802.11 specification, the WDS frames were barely 'designed'. They were just a frame format with an additional address, so you could have the source, destination, transmitter and receiver addresses. There was a vague idea that you could use this for AP to AP communication in some way, but the details were far from worked out. There was no explicitly specified, interoperable description of how to use WDS frames.
It took several years of arguing and rather daft proposals for
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Not broadcasting SSID only saves you from "casual" hacks... Anybody with a wi-fi detector program is going to know you HAVE Wi-Fi signals... They don't need SSID to crack them anymore.
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Do any of your APs act as repeaters? I tried this but was having some trouble with devices on the network being able to see each other among other bizarre errors.
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Wifi repeaters were only defined for 802.11b. Many non-standard solutions exist for 802.11g and 802.11n, some of them work, some give problems.
Anyway, one of the likely root causes is the Hidden Node problem. Make sure any access points configured to the same channel are well out of reach of each other and only use channel 1, 6 and 11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_node_problem [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels [wikipedia.org]
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I work with Juniper and Cisco on no-wifi, and for the last 18 months we've been doing wifi with aruba too... couldn't agree more, they're quite fantastic and gained something of a reputation for doing wifi well (well deserved IMHO).
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Generally you'd want to use some other device for DHCP, probably your router in a SOHO setup.
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Narrow halls and small conference rooms? That only hold about 25 people... Hmmm