AP hopping with 3 E4200s?

[trek_520]

I am installing a wifi network for a friend who has a big house > 6500 sqf or so. I was planning on putting 3 E4200s configured as WAPs off of his TDS router.

How well do devices hop - like if he is carrying his ipad around the house, or a laptop.

Is there a better way to do this? I have one of these configured as a WAP in my house and it works good but I do not switch off of it as I cannot afford such a house....

any ideas?

 

[claykin]

How much does your friend want to spend? Also how important is it that your friend has seamless wifi coverage?

What you are planning to do will provide coverage, but there is no proper handoff between routers/ap. A device can handoff if not actively using a connection, but will drop off for a moment or so while it locates the next router/ap. Also all this assumes the devices have drivers that are not buggy.

Finally, not sure I'd use the E4200. Me no likey anything from Crisco/Linksys.

What is a TDS router? Telephone/Data Services or Total Dissolved Solids? Hmmmmmm.

 

[stevech]

I am installing a wifi network for a friend who has a big house > 6500 sqf or so. I was planning on putting 3 E4200s configured as WAPs off of his TDS router.

How well do devices hop - like if he is carrying his ipad around the house, or a laptop.

Is there a better way to do this? I have one of these configured as a WAP in my house and it works good but I do not switch off of it as I cannot afford such a house....

any ideas?

Devices hop... meaning hand-off from one AP to another:
Short answer: All consumer WiFi does a terrible job of smooth hand-off for moving clients. It's because the IEEE 802.11 standards don't define an efficient mechanism to do so (as is done in cellular).

What happens is that a moving (pedestrian speed) client device will stay with the selected AP until the signal gets very weak - even though there's a far better/closer AP to use. When the signal gets so weak that the error rate is very high (user is cussing now), the client will search for another AP to re-associate to. And this takes time, perhaps a couple of seconds.

This isn't an issue unless someone is trying to do VoIP afoot or some such.

A common workaround is to put each AP on a different SSID, but same channel. Then train the client device to accept as preferred all those SSIDs. Then the user can manually force a rescan to find the better/closer AP. Not so hot.

But smooth/fast, QoS-preserving handoff in WiFi takes a professional grade managed AP system $$$$$ from Cisco, Aruba and a couple of others. These go outside the IEEE standards to enable directed handoffs and beacon broadcasts of neighbor-APs, and so on. And special client software.

 

[trek_520]

How much does your friend want to spend? Also how important is it that your friend has seamless wifi coverage?

What you are planning to do will provide coverage, but there is no proper handoff between routers/ap. A device can handoff if not actively using a connection, but will drop off for a moment or so while it locates the next router/ap. Also all this assumes the devices have drivers that are not buggy.

Finally, not sure I'd use the E4200. Me no likey anything from Crisco/Linksys.

What is a TDS router? Telephone/Data Services or Total Dissolved Solids? Hmmmmmm.

I asked him that question and the 600 or so on the e4200s was comfortable but would do a little more if something worked better. 800 is as much as he will go.

TDS router - that is the ISP here

I did some reading about airport express in repeater mode. wonder how that woudl work.

 

[trek_520]

Devices hop... meaning hand-off from one AP to another:
Short answer: All consumer WiFi does a terrible job of smooth hand-off for moving clients. It's because the IEEE 802.11 standards don't define an efficient mechanism to do so (as is done in cellular).

What happens is that a moving (pedestrian speed) client device will stay with the selected AP until the signal gets very weak - even though there's a far better/closer AP to use. When the signal gets so weak that the error rate is very high (user is cussing now), the client will search for another AP to re-associate to. And this takes time, perhaps a couple of seconds.

This isn't an issue unless someone is trying to do VoIP afoot or some such.

A common workaround is to put each AP on a different SSID, but same channel. Then train the client device to accept as preferred all those SSIDs. Then the user can manually force a rescan to find the better/closer AP. Not so hot.

But smooth/fast, QoS-preserving handoff in WiFi takes a professional grade managed AP system $$$$$ from Cisco, Aruba and a couple of others. These go outside the IEEE standards to enable directed handoffs and beacon broadcasts of neighbor-APs, and so on. And special client software.

this sounds like the level of functionality he wants - but is likely to expensive and complex. to bad there was not a consumer friendly way of doing this.

Thanks for your response.