WiFi - treat 2 SSIDs as one (roaming?) and signal issue.

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rayonline

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#205339 9-Nov-2016 13:33

Helped someone, they have an ASUS ISP supplied wireless router and a Ubi wireless access point (connected via network cable). Is it possible when people are walking around the house with the handphones that these 2 WiFi SSIDs are treated as 1 larger SSID?

RE: signal. I was running speedtest, the corner rooms was reporting 1Mbps or 2Mbps and then it reported 10 or 20Mbps. Is this a signal issue? This was both the 2.4Ghz and the 5Ghz band. This was the ASUS router if it matters not sure if it happens with the Ubi as well but that device is further away from these 2 isolated rooms. If you were near the router it reports up to 70Mbps.

Cheers.

hio77

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#1666488 9-Nov-2016 13:37

If you setup both APs with identical security and SSID configurations (pick a non interfering set of channels) Clients will roam between them.

Do be aware, in a situation like this.. It is up to the client to choose to roam not the AP encouraging it.

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Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

rayonline

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#1666528 9-Nov-2016 13:53

hio77:

Do be aware, in a situation like this.. It is up to the client to choose to roam not the AP encouraging it.

What do you mean by this? If average Joe and Jane isn't that clued up about IT they have their iPhones and Samsungs with this (1) SSID set on their phones. Do they need to do anything?

Oblivian

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#1666553 9-Nov-2016 14:22

Roaming doesn't usually happen automatically. Unless one of them has the software on it to be able to do so (think of it as a management host monitoring signal quality). or set to drop clients below thresholds.

A lot of the Ubiquity series are able to do proper handover, where the mesh is able to adjust power levels and cause the clients to handoff nicely.

Other than that, not so smart wifi on smartphones will need to be manually turned off/on for it to grab the better signal.

What you can look out for if you know the deadzones and which AP cause it is enable these threshold settings. It will go 'this phone is less than 1mb *boot*' and the phone should then attach to the other. But proper meshing and handover without disruption is a bit more tricky.

hio77

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#1666556 9-Nov-2016 14:27

Oblivian:

Roaming doesn't usually happen automatically. Unless one of them has the software on it to be able to do so (think of it as a management host monitoring signal quality). or set to drop clients below thresholds.

A lot of the Ubiquity series are able to do proper handover, where the mesh is able to adjust power levels and cause the clients to handoff nicely.

Other than that, not so smart wifi on smartphones will need to be manually turned off/on for it to grab the better signal.

What you can look out for if you know the deadzones and which AP cause it is enable these threshold settings. It will go 'this phone is less than 1mb *boot*' and the phone should then attach to the other. But proper meshing and handover without disruption is a bit more tricky.

handover is built into the kernal itself on android, it depends on the ROM on how it is implemented though.

#include <std_disclaimer>

Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

rayonline

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#1666567 9-Nov-2016 14:42

OK, so it's not going to be feasible. The place is rented out, so there is always different people and they each have their own different many devices, smartphone, tablets, laptops etc .. $200 phones, $1,300 phones etc ...

hio77

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#1666568 9-Nov-2016 14:45

rayonline:

hio77:

Do be aware, in a situation like this.. It is up to the client to choose to roam not the AP encouraging it.

What do you mean by this? If average Joe and Jane isn't that clued up about IT they have their iPhones and Samsungs with this (1) SSID set on their phones. Do they need to do anything?

What this means is, average Joe sets the SSID as their network their device will generally connect to the strongest signal.

Depending on how the Software on the phone itself handles the Wireless stack, it may jump to closer or 'better' APs when it feels it is right to do so, Or it will hold onto the signal until it drops out.

For many devices there are apps that help 'roam' often these forcefully drop and create the connection which obviously isn't the best case situation for an active stream.

On the AP side, if it has a full mesh system handover may be fully transparent. Other APs go for the option of forcing the client to reauth when it is outside of range, In your case you do not have a manage solution so it is purely up to the client to do the job.

Here is another way of looking at it, Sitting at my desk here is a few of the wireless networks i have in sight - I have selectively removed 5GHz for the point of the image, Multiple SSIDs on the AP, Client picks what to connect to. In this case my phone is actively sitting on Channel 1 If i go down to the backroom it will hop over to Channel 11.

In this case, My phone is configured to connect to a single SSID, it does not care which end it is at. I only have the one SSID configured for that to happen all seamlessly.

I do have a fair few SSIDs for diffferenet VLANs, Situations and such so excuse the clutter. there are cases i wish to control 2.4 vs 5ghz usage, same with where i wish to force a particular AP to be used.

I will point out the large caviet here being again, the configuration of the ROM, my stock HTC sense ROM did not handle roaming as smoothly as my current CyanogenMod ROM.

#include <std_disclaimer>

Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

hio77

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#1666570 9-Nov-2016 14:46

rayonline:

OK, so it's not going to be feasible. The place is rented out, so there is always different people and they each have their own different many devices, smartphone, tablets, laptops etc .. $200 phones, $1,300 phones etc ...

Feasible, it is totally feasible. You just have to be aware that it will still have edge cases that do not function as you expect

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Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

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1101

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#1667159 10-Nov-2016 09:30

It just doesnt allways work . Simple as that

I have seen ithings not roaming correctly on a very expensive MESH multi access point wifi setup . Ithing would have to disconnect from the SSID
then re-connect.

Easier way is to have different SSIDs on different channels : user picks the ssid to connect to depending on where they are in the house
it sounds crude but that way will always work

jonathan18

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#1667168 10-Nov-2016 09:42

I have this problem with our set-up, but still do prefer to stick to a single SSID with both routers.

Some devices are worse than others - eg, my LG phone will hold onto the router it's connected no matter what: our HT is at one end of the property, and our bedroom at the other end - by the time I get to the bedroom from the HT my phone's wifi connection can be down to 1MB/sec and it still won't give it up. As mentioned earlier, all it takes is a quick disable/enable of the wifi on that device for it to connect to the stronger signal.

Other devices (such as the iPad and my wife's phone) don't seem to have any issues, so I suggest a blanket approach of different SSIDs isn't necessary as it'll require ALL users to manually switch connections depending on where in the house they are, and that sounds like a bigger pain.

BarTender

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#1667208 10-Nov-2016 10:05

You should check out Openwrt and 802.11r roaming: https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/uci/wireless

Normally this is only done by the enterprise APs with controllers or capable of talking with each other. But with OpenWRT you can roll your own as long as your hardware supports it. YMMV.

nunz

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#1667302 10-Nov-2016 12:14

There is a good step by step here: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ConfiguringTwoWirelessRoutersWithOneSSIDNetworkNameAtHomeForFreeRoaming.aspx

There is a protocol that does this between two identical routers for some brands and this is also used by Wireless extenders which tend to only cost around $65.00. You plug them into a wall, set up which SSID you want to rebroadcast and off they go. Very very easy and useful.

Ideally a couple of Unifi ( Ubiquity) devices would work well. they tend to run at around $110 - $150 each and will give you that single SSID experience. see gowifi.co.nz

richms

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#1667307 10-Nov-2016 12:20

Even the unifi's dont roam very well. I can set a minimum RSSI to help since it will kick the phone off when it gets weak, but that also means that things get kicked off all the time if I happen to hold the wrong or similar.

The dream of being able to get on skype or messanger and walk around the house without any glitches is still not here, and that is why I will often flick over to 4G before making a call just so I know it wont blank out or drop as I go between the house and garage or whatever.

Richard rich.ms