End Devices are Connected to the Same Access Point

[fatimaalqadheeb]

Dears, 

I am Configuring a wireless LAN network using a Wireless LAN Contoller in Cisco Packet Tracer softwar. I was able to configure the Wireless LAN controller by setting up an admin account and established three private WLAN network. But after establishing the connection between the end devices (Labtop, Tablet and Smartphone) and theprivate WLAN network, all devices are connected to the same Access Point. I have make sure to provide each end device a seprated private WLAN network using the SSID and the password that has been configure inside the Wireless Controller. I don't know what is the problem?! Below is spasification of the network devices. 

• Wireless LAN Controller: 2504
• Switch: 2960
• Lightweight Access Point

I have uploaded the file for my work. 

Thank you

[liviu.gheorghe]

Usually the wireless client decides to which AP to connect for a given SSID and this is given by the signal strength (SNR) at which the wireless client receives the transmission from the AP.

I looked at your lab and it doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it. In my case the Laptop-PT connected to AP3 and the Tabled and Smartphone connected to AP1. All 3 wireless clients obtained IP addresses from the 192.168.1.0/24 range. This is a valid scenario in my opinion.

HTH

[fatimaalqadheeb]

Thanks for your reply.

So, there is nothing to do to make each device connect to a different AP? I am still confused about how each device has different credentials for different wireless networks and yet they are connected to the same AP! Is that because each AP has access to all the wireless networks? I am not sure if there is a way to let the AP manage only one wireless network.

[liviu.gheorghe]

There is nothing you can do to choose the AP you will connect to as long as all AP's broadcast the all wireless SSID's.

You could configure the WLC to broadcast only one SSID from a certain AP. In this case you could influence on what AP your wireless client is connected to. It's not a very real world situation, but neither is the PacketTracer.

HTH

[fatimaalqadheeb]

Thank you all for your replies, 

I have found a way in the WLC to map each AP to a signle WLAN, by creating an AP group inside the WCL. But unfortunately, it is  still not working. I got the idea from your response, and I agree with you that this is just a simuation in Packet Tracer, along with all your ideas about the distence and end-device decision.

Thank you so much. 

[Flavio Miranda]

@fatimaalqadheeb 

For real network, the distance most of time determine which AP the client will connect, but even in real network this fail sometimes.

 That´s because is up to the client to decide where to connect. 

In simulator is more complicated as the concept of distance may not exist. You can achieve what you want but you need to be pacient. You need to turn the AP off or the client off until you get what you want. 

[Scott Fella]

In a real environment, its easy to tweak the TX power and the data rates to help "influence" roaming.  Like what @Flavio Miranda and @liviu.gheorghe mentioned, the client device makes the decision on when to roam and how it make that decision. That is up to how the vendor builds the wireless driver.  Since you are just playing around and learning, keep doing what you are doing and if you have multiple ap's, buy some long ethernet cables and seperate them as far as you can so you can play around with roaming.