Multi-WAP Setup
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Hello,
First time long time…
I have been using pfSense in single access point setups for a while now, so I am familiar with the software, but...
I am just getting ready to impliment a 3 access point setup in a building where there are lots of metal racks and cement walls, that is why I decided instead of going with 1 or 2 large antennas to break it up into multiple WAP's.
What is the best way to setup pfSense so that they can cross between access points without having to renegotiate an ip and essentially reconnect once the signal is stronger to the next hop?
Any help is appreciated.
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My understanding is that if they are all hardwired to the network and all have the same SSID and security settings, clients will automatically connect to the one with the best signal after the one they are connected to drops below a certain signal strenght. Unfortunately, when that transfer happens varries widely between chipset/driver/os on the client side. I have had great luck with Atheros chipset client cards hopping at the first sign on weak signal, but my Intel cards don't hop unless the connection is actually broken.
My setup for the wireless is using a few Linksys E4200s so I can get the triple spatial stream to get 450mbps, so I'm not using pfSense for it, but the E4200s only do wireless and I do use pfSense for the router/firewall part of the network.
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My understanding is that if they are all hardwired to the network and all have the same SSID and security settings, clients will automatically connect to the one with the best signal after the one they are connected to drops below a certain signal strenght. Unfortunately, when that transfer happens varries widely between chipset/driver/os on the client side. I have had great luck with Atheros chipset client cards hopping at the first sign on weak signal, but my Intel cards don't hop unless the connection is actually broken.
Yep, that's the way it should work. Whether or not it does depends on the client. Apple clients are notoriously bad for not doing this, both iOS and OS X, they'll hang onto the AP they're associated to, even when the signal is so weak it's unusable and there's an AP with the same SSID with full signal available. Much of the time non-Apple clients will switch though.
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I have them currently setup to do as mentioned above, with the same SSID and sutff. But when they switch over they renegotiate a new IP with the WAP after it switches, which causes the switch over to take around 20 seconds. Is there a better method for this? Or should I just turn on the dhcp forwarder and forward the dhcp to my domain controllers and not use the wap for DHCP?
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Yeah I don't run DHCP on the WAPs or the forwarders actually. If the WAPs are connected to the same subnet as your DHCP server you shouldn't need a forwarder. With this setup my wireless clients just seamlessly switch over with no loss of connectivity. I can run a ping 192.168.2.1 -t and at worst they will miss one ping.