Wired WDS?

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hello!

I’ve been looking at different solutions for the best WiFi system which supports roaming for all devices.

I’ve been looking at MikroTik WDS & Mesh, and i’m just wondering if it’s possible to make all MikroTik AP’s broadcast with the same SSID, MAC, Channel and communicate this between eachother over wire (so we don’t get any repeater loss).

I do understand that this will make the system slower in the sense that the WiFi possible throughput will not be accumulated as when they’re on different channels, but rather the total wireless speed will be that of one AP (as they act just as one AP, all sending out the same packets at the same time everywhere always).

Did i get this properly? And how does one configure this properly?

Best Regards
Carl

2

Ubiquiti and I think Meru at some point had this. Ubiquiti has called theirs zero-handoff but have given up on it - it used to require all APs running on the same frequency, which is just bad.
Clients can now background scan and reconnect as they see fit + there’s some helpers for 802.1x/eap to make them able to reuse associations

3

I think I understand your question.

With a properly built network, it is possible to roam from AP to AP to AP and keep your network talking. You can even roam between 802.1q tagged WDS APs and keep your vlans alive.
Make all APs use the same SSID and same connection key.
Your APs (and WDS APs) should only bridge not route or nat. From your remote APs, backhaul everything to a central network - this is where your gateway IP is and your DHCP server should reside.

North Idaho Tom Jones

4

So implementing WDS and CapsMan should be able to deal with “perfect roaming”?

5

CapsMan can’t boost roaming
Remove password can improve roaming speed

6

re: So implementing WDS and CapsMan should be able to deal with “perfect roaming”?

CapsMan is not needed and really has nothing to do with roaming from AP to AP.

Just be sure to do the following :

  • All APs must use the same KEY and SSID
  • All APs must only bridge wan to wlan and backhaul all wireless connection traffic to your central-common dhcp server -and- gateway -and- nat/firewall server.
  • When somebody roams between AP to AP, they keep the same MAC address and same IP address and still use the same default gateway.
  • The only thing different on your various many APs is the channel/frequency - other that channel, all APs are configured the same.

FYI - I have well over 100 APs and all of them are configured to allow my clients to roam. This works especially well and even permits the event of an AP failure and still keep all customers running.

North Idaho Tom Jones