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Wireless Overlapping?

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by ja_seaton

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Ive been tesked with setting up a medium sized wireless network for our IS staff and some suits. I'm planning on implementing 3 access points in 3 buildings which are relativly close to each other. My question is: Will an overlap in coverage cause anetwork access problem for users who move between the coverage zones? In other words will the wireless card be confused as to which access point to draw from? Thanks in advance.

8 replies

by techkid

Not if you go with a reputable wireless solution. Something that's designed more for business than home. Say, Cisco Aironet AP and pc cards. Should work just fine if you're using the same IP scheme between buildings. If you're not using the same IP scheme, you may have problems moving from one network to another

by ckilday

The short answer is yes, the overlapping can cause problems. However, you can get around it by creating a separate network for your wireless devices and putting all of your access points on it. We have three, multi-story buildings in close proximity, and we wanted to give our wireless users the ability to move from one building to the other without losing their connections. We created a separate VLAN on our switches for wireless and then connected our WAP's. We also established a DHCP rangefor them and made all of the wireless NIC's use DHCP for address assignment. Works great! We set up the WAP's so that the users logon and authenticate to the regular NT cluster. Then they have access to all of their normal functions. Because theWAP's are all in the same address space, they have the same gateway and simply pass on the signal from the user. We have the WAP's overlap on purpose so the user never loses connection to the network.
I hope this helps. Best wishes,
- ck

by soliboy

The other answers left out the important point: SSID on the access points. Example, Cisco Aironet, SSID default is 'tsunami'. A handheld or notebook with 802.11b nic will roam seamlessly between APs with the same SSID. Drawback: if you want a seperate SSID for each building, you have to change the SSID on the NIC every time you go between buildings etc... If the wired backbone connects the three buildings (fibre etc), then having same SSID will be fine. Word of warning, change the default SSID on each AP from the default (big security risk) to something secure. Anyone with a 802.11b device and a little knowledge can tell from MAC address the vendor of the AP, and can find out the default SSID. Good luck.

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