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WLAN Channel and SSID Best Practices

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by tfskelly

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Hello,

Recently I ran into some interesting problems on a wireless network my company installed. The problems I encountered prompted me to do some research on WLAN best practices. However, there are several areas on which I am still unclear.

SSID - If the WAPs all tie into the same subnet, should the SSID be varied? I've seen problems encountered with clients roaming between APs, and some suggest that having different SSIDs between access points helps to resolve that issue

Channel - Should the channel between neighboring APs be varied? The argument is that varying the channel decreases interference between adjacent APs. Is there any truth to that?

I appreciate any and all feedback.

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by pds120

That would be my recommendation as long as you wish all the WAPs to act as if they are a single AP. Using the same SSID will accomplish that and allow roaming as long as the WAPs are close enough that the signals overlap. For this reason make sure that you use different channels for each WAP. I recommend that you set each channel manually instead of all on auto. If the signals don't overlap then you could use the same channel in all WAPs but I assume that you have multiple WAPs to extend range in which case you do want the signals to overlap.

If you are using security, and you should!, then make sure that you are also using the same security type and password/key for each WAP.

Do make sure that each WAP has a different IP address (if they are static) so you can administer them separately and, if you are using DHCP, the DHCP server should be behind all of the WAPs.

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