Fun with WPA/WPA2, multiple WAPs, and iPhones

[Tremelune]

I have a WAP at each end of an apartment (Asus RT-N66U and Cisco E4200), hard-wired to a pfsense router. Each has 5GHz and 2.4GHz radios . I had them all set to the same SSID and WPA2-Personal password and everything seemed fine until I tried connecting some phones.

My iPhone 4 would not connect and y iPhone 3G would not even see a network. I then set the 2.4GHz radios to use WPA/WPA2 ("auto") and now both phones can connect properly.

My understanding is that Wireless N takes a bit of a hit unless it using WPA2. Should I worry about it being set to WPA/WPA2 or have I already thought about this too much?

Are MacBooks really smart enough to choose the network with the strongest signal as they move around or do they just pick the first decent signal and stick with it if they can?

 

[stevech]

choose strongest signal....

The 802.1 specs from IEEE, and the WiFi Alliance - don't define the criteria a client device chooses which AP (including the AP within a WiFi router). Nor is there a definition on when a degrading signal should trigger a search for a better AP. There's no way to know what, if any, better-AP strategy any vendor/device uses.

Enterprise WiFi does such, but by proprietary methods (Cisco, Aruba, others).

So, best you can do is give each AP a different SSID, then the USER most choose SSID/AP, based on knowing where these are located.