oh ok.
I thought that there way maybe a way to make it use it as one.
So say you had one AP and you get a signal of -80 then you put up annother one then your get -69?
so that the client like combines the wireless to one and increases speed and signal?
That is definitely something which will NOT happen. Whatever technology you use, it’s always a one-to-one connection. One client radio associates with one AP radio. One AP radio can have multiple client radios, but each client must associate with one, and only one, AP radio.
With that out of the way…
Let’s say you you have an AP powered on and an client is connected and has a -80dBm signal strength. While that client is happily connected, you power on a new AP. This new AP is closer to the client, so it would have a -69dBm signal strength. What happens next depends on the client. The client could:
Does Mikrotik not have a "repeater: option.
I have seen on a commercial wireless ap that it had a repeater function.
IT connected to the other AP via lan and then just repeated the wireless.
So do large WISP networks like Iburst or Neoltel set up their networks like that with.
Have loads of ssid’s?
Ok i just really thought there was a way to combine them cause its quite unethical, as each client only makes use of one radio,
It would be really cool if it could like split the data over each radio according to its signal strength.
Can i mikrotik RB be setup to act as a repeater???
Repeater, yes: http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Wireless_repeater
But what you’re asking for is not repeater, you’re looking for the regular AP mode. http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Making_a_simple_wireless_AP
You can have as many APs as you want, as long as they all have the same Band and SSID (not necessarily same channel), the clients will always connect to the one with the best signal.
With a repeater would the client also just choose the strongest tower???
Or does the repeater just streangthen the ame channel,ssid etc.?
A repeater appears just like any other AP to a client.
The only difference between a repeater and a regular AP is that the regular AP connects to the network via a wire, while a repeater uses another AP to hop off from.
So i if have a Ap then 1km away a repeater of that AP, both with Omnis on and i setup a client in the middle of the two im still going to find 2 networks.
Do you think that they are ever going to design technology that combines the wireless.
Cause i just cant grab the concept, its so point less haveing to APs covering 1 area when its only going to use one. its just liek bad planing,
to do it efficianlty you have to plan your network layout so well and have a map with each AP’s coverage.
The only reason i can think why i would want to do this is if each AP was overloaded and coulnt cope with the clients.
Just a thought,
Say you picked up 2 networks (your tower) one has signal of -75 and te other -60
if you had a RB with 2 wireless cards couldnt you set them up like a bridge, so the one card connects to the one AP and the other to the 2nd AP.
You are going to see two APs. Like I said, a client doesn’t know if an AP is a wired AP or a repeater. If the client is in the middle it will just connect to the one with the best signal, that’s all it cares about.
Yes, and that is partly the reason why GSM telephony is so expensive.. part of those costs go towards planning and maintaining coverage throughout the expected coverage area. Broadband wireless is very similar to GSM telephony in concept. You have a number of ‘cells’ (wireless=APs, GSM=base stations) which have a determined coverage depending on the antenna they use. If they use omnis, they have a 360deg coverage. If you need to extend coverage further away, you add another cell, and you get another 360deg coverage around that new cell. Clients (wireless=stations, GSM=mobile phones) constantly look for a better cell and ‘move’ (wireless=roaming, GSM=handover) between the cells to ensure a good connection.
The client uses the network name (wireless=SSID, GSM=Network ID) to decide if a cell is part of the same network or part of another, foreign network. So as long as all the cells are broadcasting the same network name, the client device will keep moving between cells to achieve the best signal.
phew.. that’s a mouthful..
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_network for all the technical info.
Yes, and just imagine if you could, in theory, cover the whole of USA (or even just a whole city) with just one GSM cell, you would have thousands, possibly millions of client devices fighting for their turn to access the cell… that would simply not work… same goes for wireless. So you have many ‘small’ cells each handling a bunch of clients.
The other reason why you’d take a cell approach is because RF power (especially microwave frequencies which are used by wireless) gets lost very quickly in the air, so you would need a very, very, very, very powerful transmitter to cover a whole country with just one AP.. and your clients would need just an equally huge transmitter at their homes to transmit back to the AP.
Yes, you could, because the RB has 2 wireless cards, which means you have 2 clients. To the AP, the two clients appear as two independent clients, the AP doesn’t know they are physically in the same box.
Hope this helps.
PS: this topic is starting to sound like a wireless support line.. please create a new topic if you have new questions.
Thanks allot,
last q,
can wireless roam from one ap to annother easily?? like could you be making a skype call in a car while driving around your tower and it wont like disconnect as it changes Aps.
MikroTik is not really built with roaming in mind, so it doesn’t work very well in a standard configuration.
However there were some people on this forum who were trying to use it for streaming video feeds off F1 cars, I don’t know how that worked out but you could do a search.
Well i have some feed. back
I just tried it at home.
but i named all my 4 AP’s the same name and pasword. and all the computers/phones only pick up one network and it works amazingly well. i pretty much have ful signal over my whole house.
and with the roaming, i have a nokia N97 i can walk from one side of the house to the othere and it jumps between AP’s as i go along.
i must say i am quite impressed.
Thanks for all the help.