Wireless Roaming with WinXP

My understanding of Wireless is that is exactly what they do. Once they get a signal from one access point they keep the signal from the initial access point until the signal gets too weak and a stronger signal is found. We can force a new access point to pick up by covering the wireless card with our hand and then release it when near a new access point.

Its good that you have three AP with different channels. Hopefully you assigned them to be channel 1,6, and 11. so they wont overlap one antoher.

And SSIDs must match for each AP you have, so the laptop can associate. I believe your laptop can contain up to four SSIds. Or you can have all 3 AP have the same SSID.

Another, issue is have you configured WEP at any of the APs? THerwise, I believe you should be just fine, roaming.

If it persist, then you can try reducing the coverage strentgh of some of your APs, especially if they are close in approximatey.

If I'm not mistaken the ssid, channel, and encryption must match for three AP's that way you dont have to manually configure at every jump the card makes. The only time you would wanna change the channel is if your AP allows you to give differnt channels for the three different technologies(802.11a,802.11g, 802.11b).

In other words:
802.11a channel 1
802.11b channel 6
802.11g channel 11

Each AP you have must have the same info.

The cards must be put on the channel that corresponds to the type. They then should be able to jump AP's without having to manually find the network.

You must also have a feature in the AP that lets it know that it is supposed to act as an AP and not a router.

You don't have to specify a specifig Access point. The wireless will pick up best line of sight. It may be that you need to move your Access points if you are not sharing the load the way you want to.