Hi all.
I want to setup a 3 sector MT ap, with 3 r52 cards, for 2.4.
I already have a omni in place, with single atheros card, aprox wireless clients.
My question follows:
Is it any way wich I can use not to disturb the clients in their current setup ?
I mean some kind of bridging between the wireless cards, so I keep their current addresses and ap setup ?
The clients have most of them atheros ap’s, not MT. Some do know about WDS, some do not.
I just want to replace the omni with 3 sectors, so I have few clients in each wireless card, and less noise. It is a very noisy zone. On site survey I see at least 20 ap’2 on 2.4 ghz, about ten of them having signal better than -75db.
Or, wich way you suggest it would be better done ?
Several MT boxes, sector antennas, wireless cards configured the same (mac, ssid, ip address - the nat part - eg. 192.168.x.y, everything ? )
The box is currently doing NAT, so if I put several boxes with the same address space masqueraded behind each public ip, there is no problem. Suggestions
I think you’ll have problems with ARP if you try to have multiple wireless cards with the same MAC, at worst packets will get routed to the wrong interface, at best you’ll be transmitting the same packet out through all interfaces and you’ll have a hit on your bandwidth.
Your setup depends on the level of bandwidth you want to support. Seperate routers would give higher bandwidth, but would cost a lot more. Some people use one wireless interface and a passive signal splitter to supply three antennae, I’ve never tried this so I don’t know whether you need higher output power from the wireless, my guess is the power gets split equally between the antennae plus some loss in the splitter. This setup means all antennae are using the same frequency.
Three wireless cards in one router is the best compromise. Set different MAC addresses for each wireless, as long as clients are set to roaming they’ll just pickup whichever SSID has the strongest signal and the MAC address should be transparent. Create a bridge, add the three interfaces to the bridge and add an IP address to the bridge, thus all clients will still “see” the same IP address and SSID. This setup would allow different frequencies for each sector, however if you do use different frequencies in each sector, you’ll probably need to reconfigure the clients.
No problem using the same private address space behind each NAT as nothing on the public side will ever know about the private addresses.
Usually there should be no need to reconfigure the clients for that reason. A normal wireless client will just “follow” the AP’s frequency. If you configured your clients to a fixed frequency, though, you WILL need to reconfigure them.
But configuring a client to a fixed frequency is usually not a good idea anyway - just because of what you’re just experiencing: You are forced to change the used frequency (new third-party-APs on the same frequency or whatever) and do NOT want to reconfigure every client…
Thank you all for the answers.
I think I’ll try the last answer.
I’ll put three virtual ap’s, and move the clients with time.
The frequency is not the problem. The clients’s follow the ap. The ssid and the mac ar the problem.
The configuration of them is on diffrent pages.
And also the configuration for security. I currently use wep. I will use wpa on the new interfaces.
I’ll make three virtual ap’s on the router, and move the client ap’s (in client mode.)
And after that, I see no other way, but to change their addresses.
And move the virtual ap’s to the new routers, separate for each interface.
How did you make up?
Also, how are you controlling which client can connect to what card?
My experience doing access-list is that the client disconnects while trying to connect to the wrong card.
Well… i have done it.
Three rb’s, one radio each, same ssid, no access lists on them, radio conects to the one with the strongest signal. Bridge from ethernet to wireless, blocking mac and ip’s not valid/authorized to go further, from the next router.
(so, three rb, three radios, three sectors. Bridge ethernet and radios.)
Unfortunately had to change some of the clients, wich connect by mac/ssid pair only. . Others connect by ssid only, they are all ok.
Thought about access list for each card, with all my clients, but it’s kinda … long ! (you could do that, put same access list, with all your clients, on each of the radios. It should be fine. )
. Others connect by ssid only, they are all ok.
(you could do that, put same access list, with all your clients, on each of the radios. It should be fine. )