Ap Local Mac database

[pedroclaro2002]

Greetings,

In my wireless system I have 3 Cisco 1100 access points with the same SSID. I'm using Mac authentication only, and I have several different users. In each AP the Mac local database changes. For example user A and B can associate access point nº1 but not nº2 or 3. This works fine until one the client wireless card decides to connect to an access point that it's not allowed to. In the AP log I see "Authentication failed for client XXXX", and the user can not connect to the access point that it should (I guess because of the signal strength). Is there anyway I can force the client to connect to an acess point where its mac address is valid?

Thanks in advance.

[paddyxdoyle]

Hi,

What type of Wireless NICs are you using?

You can configure this using the ACU, i've got an Aironet 350 PCMCIA card and from the client you can specify up to four Access points to connect.

HTH

PD

[pedroclaro2002]

I'm using lucent orinoco cards. But I wish there was a way of doing this without "touching" in the clients. My idea was to have a wireless manager telling the clients to associate and dissacioate with specific APs. I tried using MAC authentication for doing this, but it I guess it doesn't work.

[dixho]

This is impossible. The sequeneces of events for a wireless client to associate an AP is as follows:

1. the wireless client listen to all channels and look for beacon frames from all AP.

2. the wireless client then choose one of the AP to associate.

In other words, the logic for picking AP is on the wireless client. IF Lucent provide the function from the wireless manager, it can be done. I do not have any experience with Lucent Wireless Manager.

[pedroclaro2002]

I thought about the roaming and load balacing options to solve this issue. I understand the breezecom has a proprietary algorithm that an AP can send a frame, "jump frame", that tells a client to associate to other AP.

Bottom line, to "force" a client to associate with an AP, we always require dedicated software on the client side? I still have the feeling that might be "somesort" of way of doind this.