Two access points in same house

I have a house that is just slightly too large for 1 access point so I have two, a Dlink DI-624 (router & access point) and a Dlink DWL-2100ap. This system works pretty well, but I have found that if you have an issue, Dlink's tech support is abysmal. My question is this, what is the best way to set these two access point up for the best performance and reliability of connection? One issue I can't seem to resolve is finding a convient way to move around the house with a laptop or tablet and have them switch from one access point to another seamlessly. it always seems to involve a little tweaking of the wireless settings to get the connection setup after switching from one access point to the other. Another issue is the wireless client doesn't seem able to switch to the stronger access point. All of my wireless clients are dlink except for the tablet which can use either the dlink client or an intel client (I've got the Dlink usb nic for use with it, it also has an intel 2200b minipci nic in it.

Thanks in advance for any pointers anyone can give me

Reply to
The Ghost of Thomas Jefferson
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I've given up on D-Link products, they just aren't worth screwing around with IME.

I've had good luck with multiple Linksys WAP54G APs with the same SSID and Intel 2200BG clients roaming nearly seamlessly (might drop a few packets during the switchover).

So it can be done, but I don't know if it can be done with your hardware.

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

Ditto on the Linksys WAP54G's (about $48 at walmart), have 2 in the house, and another in the garage (cabled to the ones in the house), with the same ssid and channel. 5 Acres, can roam around with my laptops. Started with the dlinks, but trashed em and went to linksys..

Reply to
Peter Pan

I've been experimenting with my wireless lan today and I've noticed that it takes quite awhile for the PC/Windows to recognise that something has changed and to repair the connection - sometimes upto 30 seconds. A 30 second loss of connectivity would be a pain.

Reply to
CWatters

This site looks like it might help...

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Quote:

To avoid interference the channels selected should be properly spaced apart. The graphics illustrate how one can reuse a channel and still avoid interference. The client will seamlessly roam between these access points.

For the client to be able to roam seamlessly, it is necessary for the access points to:

Be connected to the same IP subnet so the client won't have to change IP address Have the same SSID to identify the wireless network Have the same authentication and encryption schemes so that the client knows how to authenticate and encrypt.

If one or more of these requirements are not met, network communication for the client will halt. The client will not regain communication before it configures the correct parameters for the new access point or until the client reaches another access point which has the same configuration as the first one.

Continues

Reply to
CWatters

If you are using XP, check your seurity settings.. Usually when I install software (or sometimes updaing windows itself), the firewall gets reset and turned back on.. (Have a 3rd party firewall, and don't use windows and it's exceptions anyway)

Reply to
Peter Pan

Again, it depends on the specifics of your LAN, your APs, and your client radios. We don't know what you have, so it's hard to tell what your point is...

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

Thanks for everyone for the ideas. I had them set on 2 seperate ssids, I'm going to try changing them to the same thing.

Reply to
The Ghost of Thomas Jefferson

OK, but again it's going to depend on the information you are keeping secret from us, the manufacturer, specific model, and firmware revision of your APs and the manufacturer, specific model, and driver version of your client. [Gee, I'm sounding like Jeff. 8*]

I've detailed what hardware/software combination works, and I wouldn't waste any time with Duh-Link hardware, good luck with whatever you have.

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

I have a Dlink DI-624 revc firmware version is 2.70 and a DWL-2100ap firmware v2,00. I'm trying to test the roaming with the builtin Broadcom 802.11g adapter that came with a HP Pavillion dv5140us.

I tried changing the SSID on the access point to match the SSID of the router late last night. At that point the laptop appeared to connect to the Access point, but was unable to pass ip traffic at that point. At that point the network became completely unstable, with the router losing connection to the wan.

Sadly, because I have invested a lot of money in the Dlink junk, coming to realize that their hardware is junk. I have tried to use Dlinks support people, they are the biggest asses I have ever tried to deal with in my 30 yrs experience in the IT field.

Reply to
The Ghost of Thomas Jefferson

Sorry, I had confused you with CWatters, who didn't detail his system.

Sorry, but as you've discovered, Duh-Link is a disaster. I'm not even sure you can or should try to match a wireless router with an AP, you really (IMHO) should be using two APs.

Also, Intel has some good roaming agressiveness knobs in their drivers, I dunno if Broadcom does, but I'd doubt it.

This sound like the problem I had with DLink repeaters, I doubt there's an answer that doesn't involve you spending another $100-$150 for a pair of Linksys WAP54G APs, and maybe $30 for the Intel card. The 'good' news is you can still probably use your router as a hard-wired device, just change it's subnet to 192.168.1.x so you can get to the APs to configure them (configure one at a time and move it off the default address).

Sorry there isn't an easy answer...

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

The Ghost of Thomas Jefferson hath wroth:

You left off the trademark symbol. I should have my bad attitute copywritten.

The choice of access points don't matter much. It's the client software that has to make the switch between access points. The way it works is that the access point will try to retain an association for as long as possible. On some access points, you could literally disable the wireless client, wait a few minutes, turn on the wireless client back on, and it will continue where it left off as if nothing had ever changed. That's great for reliability in multipath, fading, or interference infested environments, but not so great for roaming. It's also a good test to see how long it will take for the access point to just give up in disgust and try to disconnect. As I recall, the DI-624 is somewhere near forever.

That leaves the responsibility for switching in the hands of the client. The problem there is that most clients will not connect to a new access point without first disconnecting from the old access point. The client will issue a de-associate packet, and wait for a response. If the the old access point is already out of range, it can wait for quite a while before deciding that it's time to switch. This time interval seems to vary wildly among wireless clients. I know that Cisco and Intel Proset 10.x allow programming the tenacity of the client. However, it's not very fine grained.

It's easy enough to test. Find a location where you can connect to either of your two access points. Connect to one and then have someone turn off the access point so that the access point does not respond to a de-association request. Now, try to connect to the other access point. I predict a wait of at least 10 seconds or perhaps more. (I have an HP ze2000 laptop which probably has the same Broadcom radio, but I'm too lazy to go out to the truck and get it. It's raining.) In this case, fast roaming really means "assume the deassociate request arrived and don't bother waiting for a response".

Naw, that's all wrong. It should work with identical SSID's. I have customers with lots of systems with identical SSID on each AP. I currently have 2 AP's in my house with identical SSID's. Even if you put both radios on the same RF channel, with the same SSID, it should work just fine. (Hopefully not in the same room or you'll have lots of interference problems). I can't really tell what went wrong. Try the usual remedies of check your settings,

I really like the term "unstable" as it presents the image of impending explosion or mechanical collapse. Could you be a bit more specific as to what happens?

I've had problems with the DWL-2100ap. Setup as a point to point bridge, they would hang far too often. I bought them because they supported SNMP, but soon found some of the returned numbers to be erratic. I soon found that in order to make it work, I had to disable ALL the advanced features (no 108Mbits packet burst, no WPA, no

802.11b compatibility, etc). |
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the h**l is "Radio Wave on/off"?) I also found that it would work on any channel exept channel 6. At first, I though it was interference, but it turned out to be a known bug. This was about 3 years ago and some of these bugs may have been fixed by now. However, I had a paying customer that wanted something that worked immediately. So, I bought a pair of WAP54G radios, removed the DWL-2100ap link, and lived fairly happily thereafter.

Somewhat later, I decided to see how they would work as an access point. Some of my Centrino clients would not connect with WPA enabled. (I just noticed that the DLink web page claims Centrino tested). After much wasted time testing a multitude of laptops, I just gave up (again) and installed a WGR-614v3 or v4 setup as an access point, and sold the DWL-2100ap's.

I've tried to avoid dispensing my personal opinion of companies in general and try to concentrate on individual products. That's because all the bottom of the line companies (Linksys, Belkin, DLink, Hawking, Netgear) buy from vendors in China, Korea, and Taiwan, and just put their plastic box and name on the product. Inside, they're quite similar depending on source. For example, all these are approximately the same inside:

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There are substantial differences in the quality of support from these vendors. They're all fairly bad because a low cost product simply doesn't have enough margin built in to provide quality support. An offer of "premium" support sounds more like extortion, so they don't do that. The result is fairly uniformly dismal support. For example, I recently had to ask for an unreleased firmware image from one vendor. I tried twice asking for it directly and failed. So, I let them walk me through a stupid script, guessing where it would end. I was right and eventually received the necessary firmware.

However, I still remember the bad old days (late 1990's), when getting support required a 1 hour wait on hold, and where the customers were training the support staff. It was fairly obvious from customer complaints that they really wanted someone to answer the phone in a reasonable amount of time. So, we have todays support system, with fairly quick response, but seriously lacking in quality and experience. Since 90% of the support calls are fairly simple, the script method offers the greatest benifit for the greatest number (at the lowest cost). Call them with anything that requires experience or knowledge, and the script method just doesn't work.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Maybe he could get a small inflateable boat and some rope, and use it as an anchor? :)

Reply to
Peter Pan

The laptop made a radio connection to the DWL-2100 AP, but was unable to get to the internet. Even though windows was indicating that the Broadcom wireless NIC was connected to it, you could not ping it or the router at 192.168.0.1.

At this point, I went down to my office downstairs and found that the router had lost connection to the WAN. Even if I disconnected the power and reconnected it would not work. I had to do a reset on the access point to get the router to work. It is very strange, it is almost like the Dlinks are using the ssid as some type of hostname. I've got everything back up now, but I'm back to 2 ssids.

I'm still wondering where in the script it says, 'Hang up on customer". That seems to be Dlink's approach when they either can't resolve your issue or don't have a clue what you are talking about.

Reply to
The Ghost of Thomas Jefferson

Thanks, I may spring for 2 linksys APs latter this year.

Reply to
The Ghost of Thomas Jefferson

Do 'most' 802.11 clients work this way or 'all'?

I'm reading Cisco Press "802.11 Wireless LAN Fundamentals" and they explain the difference between "seamless" roaming, which is possible within the cellular world, and "nomadic" roaming, which is what happens with 80.211, as being ... nomadic clients disconnect from on AP before connecting to the new.

Just wanting to clarify / confirm what they say is correct for all clients or perhaps just Cisco.

BernieM

Reply to
BernieM

This sounds very like the problem I had with Duh-Link DWL-800AP devices trying to repeat each other. While their advertising literature claimed it would work, the repeater would wedge the router, and trying to roam would bring the whole thing down.

Just walk away, really, if your time is worth anything.

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

"BernieM" hath wroth:

I don't know. My analysis is the result of some of my reverse engineering, tinkering, and packet sniffing. Also, from some reading of the IEEE 802.11 specs. I use the term "most" under the assumption that not all wireless clients follow the rules. I need to do more on how it works but don't really have the time (or ability) to understand everything that's going on during a change of connection. There were an awful lot of packets floating around and it was difficult to decode their purpose with Ethereal.

Cellular has one big advantage to 802.11. The client can be connected to two or more cell sites at one time. That's the reason CDMA has a seamless handoff between cell sites. Other systems are a bit less graceful, but do allow negotiating a new connection before dropping the old connection. MicroSloth has done some work in this area with:

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haven't personally tried it yet, but I've been told that it works quite well by those that have. I didn't ask how well it would serve as a substitute for roaming.

The Cisco client I used was a Cisco 350 PCMCIA card: |

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it was NOT running in an all Cisco system which uses WDS to handoff the connection info and encryption key to a new access point. See the above URL under "Fast Secure Roaming". It was at a customers hotel with 4 access points (same SSID, different channels). I was trying to figure out why this one particular laptop with the Cisco 350 card would do a really nice job of roaming, but none of the other laptops would switch until the signal from the old AP was totally gone. After some tinkering, it appeared (my guess) that the client gained its speed and flexibility by simply not waiting for an acknoledgement to a disassociate. I would think this would be a settable option, but didn't think to check.

Since Intel collaborated with Cisco on Cisco Compatible Extensions v4.0 (whatever those are), I would think they would have similar features and algorithms. |

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Optimal AP Selection Technology: Improves client and network performance by more efficient and proactive roaming to optimal access points. As a result, traffic is load balanced more effectively across AP's. Note the word "proactive" which I guess means client initiated.

In: |

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'll find under 3.2.3: ... administrators have options to adjust roaming aggressiveness and select values that provide optimal balance between roaming and performance. See Fig 8. This can also be change in the Proset 10.x client, but I couldn't find a page with a corresponding illustration.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

The Ghost of Thomas Jefferson hath wroth:

I read that to mean that the router is at 192.168.0.1 and so is the DWL-2100ap. That won't work as it's an obvious duplicate IP. The default IP of the DWL-2100ap is 192.168.0.50. Is that what you're using. Can you ping it? If not, you have a wireless problem, probably the encryption key.

Also, Windoze is stupid. It reports a connection even if WEP/WPA encryption has failed. The only clue is either an endless "obtaining IP address" or assignment of a 169.254.xxx.xxx address. Check with IPCONFIG.

No connection between SSID and hostnames. I can't tell why your DI-624 hung. I have had routers that would mysteriously reset themselves to defaults. I traced one to a negative ion generator the customer was using nearby. Another was caused by an AC ground protection problem on some shielded CAT5.

When you fall off a horse, you should get back on the horse and ride or you will be forever afraid of horses. Try the same SSID again.

I don't call support very often. I've never had support hangup on me in perhaps the last 8 years, much as I probably tempted them to do so. I also helped at a local support organization. Hanging up on the customer (without due cause) was a great way to get either fired or not get a raise. I think it was something like the 3rd rule in the policy and procedures manual. Usually, they'll put you on hold forever, and hope that you go away, but they never hangup.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I can, Duh-Link products are really broken.

It'll just hang again. If you think Duh-Link is redeemable I'd be happy to mail you three DWL-800APs and you can fiddle with them till you hate them enough to throw them in the trash. Really, I had enough of

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last me a lifetime.

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

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