WAP321 roaming

[jdempseyajns]

Hello,

I'm setting up a wireless network for a small office with 25 people with approx. 15 on wirless at any time. The office is very long and skinny so I'm looking at a cluster of WAP321's. I'm hoping these will save a ton of money versus buying a controller and more expensive access points.

How do these work for roaming? I tried a search but I've found descriptions of them not roaming at all and descriptions of them roaming but you have to do some kind of pre-authorization right up to they roam with no user interaction, they just roam.

I need the users to be able to roam around the office with no interruption. I don't want to install these and have to rip them out later and put in new ones and a controller. If somebody could assist me in finding out if the WAP321's will work for roaming I would appreciate it.

Thanks

James

[Tom Watts]

Hi James, seemless roaming is not possible without a controller. AP clusters work basically from a defined threshold. When you are connected to one of the clustered AP, once the signal has degraded enough, you are moved to the next AP. The benefit of the cluster is the fact you don't have to reauthenticate. However, being switched over to a different AP may cause a brief service interruption (but not always).

You can also run in to void zones where a signal is not prominent for one AP or the other then get kind of stuck in a 'poor service area'.

-Tom
Please mark answered for helpful posts

[jdempseyajns]

Thanks for the information.

Any idea what type of brief service disruption I would be looking at? Are we talking a second for it to switch or two seconds? I'm picturing somebody walking from their office to a meeting room with an ipad or laptop. It would not seem excessive for the wirless to take a second or so to switch over as long as they don't have to reauthenticate or manually reconnect.

I'm not as worried about low signal zones, for this price point I could easily cover the space and still save money versus a controller. It's really the roaming I need.

[Tom Watts · Accepted solution]

Hi James, the roaming is good enough to not be awkward. It would be an automatic switchover and limited amount of disruption generally speaking. There may be 1-2 complaints here and there if someone spends a lot of time "pacing" where it would actually force the switch over a lot. But for casual roaming it is almost not noticable or a light delay but really it's not business affecting.

-Tom
Please mark answered for helpful posts

[jdempseyajns]

That sounds like it will work. For the most part they will be sitting in their offices or in a meeting room. Not very often will they be moving around the office except to go from one area to another. I don't think there will be anybody just roaming all the time around the building so this should work.

Thank you for the help.