How can I increase the range of the wireless between floors at my workplace?

If you are using wifi extenders, just set them up to use one network name. Odd that it would not be setup that way in the first place.

If someone got actual wifi routers and set them up on differet networks, thats a bit odd for corporate use. Best setup is to have wifi access points connected to the wired network at each floor, probably in different areas to ensure coverage. You can setup each access point to be on the same network and the connections between them when browsing the building should be more or less seamless.

You could build a special wireless lan network and hook all the floors together with their own wired network and attach the broadband network to it. Sound like a plan until you try it and your session still drop and the users still need to authenticate to the AP.

You have a couple of issues. Windows will stay connected to a AP until it gets disconnected and only then will it look for a better one. You could be sitting right next to a AP on the same network and it will continue to use one far away if it first connected there.

Now after it finally decides to change the AP are totally independent hardware. So they now must start the security authentication from the start. Depending on how you have this configured the user may or may not be prompted to enter credentials.

So you finally get past that issue. If you are in a large building where you cannot span the same network to all the wireless you IP has to change. This is pretty easy from a DHCP standpoint but if you had open session to some server like your mail server all your sessions will be dropped and you again must connect with the new IP. Like the AP you may or may not have to rekey in credentials but it will take some time for this to occur even if it is automatic.

So how is this solved....lots of money.

Most the larger commercial AP vendors sell solution to this problem. I have configured both cisco and HP system and have used system from Avaya which appears to work similar. What they do is introduce a expensive server (multiple if you want redundancy). This server in effect controls the AP and makes them appear as one large AP...sorta. They also have a couple of solutions to the IP changing issue depending on how advanced you need. Cisco has a advanced solution called ipmobility that even lets you transparently shift from the in building wifi to cell based broadband vpn. Their demo video show someone using a video conference system with a pc on a push cart going down the hall getting in a elevator and getting off another floor never even glitching the video or audio.

Realistically unless you can afford one of these systems you are just going to have to live with some of these issues. You can minimize it to a point but it is a fundamental problem with how this stuff works.

Yes, you can setup all the wireless networks as one, I suggested that in my first post, that's the prope way to setup a wifi network in a building. Just set them all up on the same switch and put the same SSID on them. You can check on the manual to the devices to ensure you have them setup properly.

No matter what you do windows in its wisdom will stay connected to the AP it originally connected to until the signal becomes unusable. Only then will it search for a stronger signal. Your users will likely have to manually force a wireless disconnect even if you were to extend all the networks to all the floors.

Hi All,

Thanks for all the messages, I believe we've found a good solution to this issue with the Netgear PROSAFE® 16-AP Wireless Management system.

There's just one thing that I need to know about this that I've not read and it's whether or not this will allow roaming for our users so that they will automatically be connected to the AP with the strongest signal when they move between floors on our site?

Can someone please confirm this for me?

The link to the spec of this device on the Netgear site is here:
http://www.netgear.co.uk/business/products/access-points-wireless-controllers/wireless-management/WMS5316.aspx#two

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Looks like the WC7520 has load balancing, but you should talk to someone at Netgear to get the best answer.

Not likely with that product. looking at the tabs you linked netgear appears to sell a better unit wc7520 that I know nothing about but it does appear to be much closer to things I have seen from cisco and HP.

This is a cisco link that may help

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ps430/prod_technical_reference09186a00801c5223.html


The product you linked is a most a centralized "administrator". It make management of the AP themselves easier but it does not actively manage the end user devices.

There are 2 major issue.

First when you roam you want the users when they switch to be able to switch with as little outage as possible. This means the AP must somehow reduce all the overhead involved with the authentication of the users when they connect and retaining the mac and ip addresses. This can be done with these systems.

The second is the roaming itself. This is always controlled by the client so it is very dependent on the driver software installed with the card. If you look at the cisco link they have client software that can switch based on many criteria. Exactly which wireless cards this client is compatible with I have not read far enough. When you use the default ones built into windows many times it will not switch until the signal level drops to a unusable point but I have see drivers from other manufactures that let you select things like errors to make the change.

Thanks for that.
With this Cisco solution, is the management side of things dealt with via software as opposed to a central Management device like the Netgear model?

Would it just be a case of purchasing the necessary amount of Cisco Aeronet 1200 series AP's and then configuring them using the management software provided by Cisco? Presumably the clients would require some Cisco client software installing too?

Cisco decided to change everything up since I really knew how their wireless works. Used to be a system call MARS but I have not stayed on top of this.

I think they have combined the central management (ie software upgrades and configuration) into the same device that makes all the AP appear as one large unit. It is still a expensive "server" that controls everything.

When you are talking these systems you are paying a lot so I would contact cisco and ask them to have one of their partners come out and talk to you. They have a pretty standard sales presentation and can answer all these questions. Cisco has built the cost of this sales overhead into the products so you might as well use it since you will pay for it even if you buy over the internet.

In all honesty, we're just a small organisation with about 70 staff based on our site, so we don't have a need for an enterprise system which is going to cost £100's.

Its not a massive issue at the moment, but just a niggling one that we could do with resolving if the price is right. Do you think Range extenders or new AP's with superior range antenna's might be the better way to go for our budget? (which is around £500, give or take a little).

You likely cannot significantly increase the range of AP. Antenna help a little but the buildings tend to also increase there rate of absorption so it ends up not doing much. In a commercial building you many times are doing the reverse. We many times reduce the transmit power of the AP to reduce the interference between our own devices.

Range extenders have the exact same problem, a range extender is just a AP that uses the wireless signal for the backhaul connection rather than a ethernet cable. If you associate with the main router it will stay associated to it and not switch to the extender any more than another AP.

I would work on changing the client settings. I know even the very basic drivers have the ability to set the signal levels where it goes looking for a new AP. There may be some more advanced client similar to the cisco ones that you can have it monitor things like throughput and errors. This would allow for automatic switching but the other part related to the IP addresses and key authentication you are just going to have to live with the couple of seconds it takes to switch.

Thanks for the advice, do you or anyone else recommend any such software that would do what we require?