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kiwitinker
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WDS or independent APs?

Tue Mar 23, 2021 11:56 am

I have a setup with a central 2.4GHz Omni for clients to connect to. To extend the coverage two sets of SXT (as connector to the Omni) and ethernet'ted to a dual channel (2.4 and 5GHZ) AP had been put in place. All three 2.4GHz antennas run on the same frequency and SSID, but all three (Omni +the two APs) handle their own DHCP with a different network IP scheme. The APs interfaces (2.4GHz, 5GHz and Ethernet) are bridged.
Now the client wants to add a third combo.
I wonder if this would better be setup as WDS (aka everything bridged and a single DHCP on the Omni), or keep the routed setup that it is at present?
Which would offer a better throughput and allow clients to seamlessly roam between the APs?
Any ideas?
 
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mkx
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Re: WDS or independent APs?

Tue Mar 23, 2021 2:37 pm

All three 2.4GHz antennas run on the same frequency and SSID, but all three (Omni +the two APs) handle their own DHCP with a different network IP scheme.
This pretty much breaks roaming preformance: when client sees different AP with same SSID, it often assumes L3 network would be contiguous and after roaming to different AP doesn't start address acquisition process. If it romas into different IP subnet, it doesn't have a valid IP address and connectivity outage is quite long. It has to obtain new IP address making all existing IP connection to become invalid. Exactly the same happens if adjacent AP has different SSID, but this time wireless device knows to start address acquisition immediately.

So if you really want to have seamless roaming between APs, they have to share L3 (IP) network in addition to shared SSID.

Which I guess answers your question: definitely transform wireless network to bridged instead of routed network. Routing only has a single (but often quite important) benefit over bridged: it blocks broadcasts/multicasts (unless there's special setup in place), in certain cases broadcast traffic can kill network performance.

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