Restricting users to a single Access Point

[scroffy123]

I have a scenario where I need to ensure that a few users in one office only associate to one AP in particular. Is it possible to tie a mac address of a device to one AP?

Basically I have a floor in the building with 5 AP and have 3 users sitting in a closed office that has its own AP , however 2 users associate with a AP outside of the closed office and are suffering from poor signal strength where the one device within the office has no issues with signal at all as it is associated to the AP in the office.

Any advice would be appreciated,

Thanks

[George Stefanick]

Sean,

I would be best to fill in the gap with another ap, perhaps? But yes, depending on the supplicant you could lock the client down to what AP attaches to. Or on the AP you can lock what clients are allowed to talk to it via mac filtering. These are Band-Aids in my opinion.

[scroffy123]

George,

Thanks for the reply. The issue is that despite being 5 metres from the AP 2 devices will associate with a AP further away and with a lower signal strength.

I will attempt to lock a test device to a single AP and test.

Thanks

[George Stefanick]

You could also power the Aps in such away to persuade the clients to roam. but keep in mind, client determine where to go unless you have something like load balance on.

What type of Cisco wireless system do you have ?

[scroffy123]

George,

I have 30 1142 AP mounted on the ceiling panels and two 5508 WLC in a mobility domain. The AP are spread across 5 open plan floors (  there are plenty of glass partitions and meeting rooms ) and we run AP Groups and each floor is in its own subnet. The main issue we have is that users are associating and then dropping off and associating with other AP's. Not sure but we didnt have this issue on 1131AP that were mounted on the walls and we only had 14 of them to cover the same space. RRM is on and the second controller is recieving updates.

I am a bit of a beginner with wireless and this was my first deployment and while i myself dont notice the drop outs a small minority of users are , which is why i was wanting to get two or 3 devices connected to one AP and monitor.

Sean

[Stephen Rodriguez]

you might also be able to tweak the roaming settings in the supplicant, depending on what's being used

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPad App

[scroffy123]

Stephen,

I will set this at the most aggressive roaming level.

Thanks, will report back.

Sean

[George Stefanick]

I concur with Steve. If you have client romaing on agressive your clients will have a tendency to jump aps more often. But to level the playing field, you should always be within -75dBm (data) of your Aps.

BUT ~~ If your client is over top of an AP from the floor below and regs a better signal the client could opt to roam to that AP.

[scroffy123]

Hi, turns out I was being stupid. Since I am running AP Groups and have two WLC I realised I only had the SSID presented on one WLC AP Group and not the other. All sorted out now but thanks for the advice and hopefully I will be able to get to the level you guys are at.

Thanks again for the advice.

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPhone App

[George Stefanick]

Good deal... Glad everything worked out. Make sure your group settings are identical across your WLCs in case of ap failover.