Hi,

I currently have a Vigor 2700g which provides both wired and wireless connectivity and internet access for my various devices. Like a few people on here, I get poor wireless performance at the other end of the house. I've therefore run CAT6 cabling to any rooms where connectivity is required and isn't adequate.

I'd now like wireless in these rooms and I would ideally have client devices able to transparently 'roam' from one AP to another, based on signal strength.

I believe using WDS would acheive this, but reading the docs and posts here suggests that I'd be limited to 'g' wireless (the best my 2700 can do) and the overhead of WDS would half the performance of all my wireless devices :?

The other option is to just have an AP on a different channel/SSID and let the client devices decide when to 'hop' to the other AP. That would probably need to be a manual switch over and it wouldn't be seamless. On the up side, its a straight-forward configuration and I could have the AP's operating at different speeds. Eg. I could replace my 2700g with a 2710n and have faster access in the main areas of the house and 'g' elsewhere using the old 2700 as 'dumb' access point.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Cheers,
Bryan

I would get one or more AP700, much cheaper than a new router. Then connect them to the nearest cat5 cable in AP mode rather than WDS. you will only get 100Mbs i.e. the speed of the cable. But that's quicker than the max of wirelessg you have for the main router. You can use the same SSID on the main router and the APs with the same security for seamless roaming. You may even be able to use different channels to avoid interference between aps and the router, I havn't tried that option though.

Howard Simpson wrote: You can use the same SSID on the main router and the APs with the same security for seamless roaming.

Excellent! Thanks for the help, really appreciate it. That setup would be ideal - is roaming really as simple as that? I'm currently using WPA2 - but presumably I just use the same Pre-Shared Key?

Cheers,
Bryan

Yes just use the same PSK

Once again, many thanks Howard; I'm happy to report that my new AP700 is working flawlessly as you described. I now have good wireless signal throughout the house and both my laptop and iPhone seem to roam between AP's without any prompting or change of config.

For anyone else looking to do the same, my existing router is a Draytek 2700, which is connected to the Internet via ADSL. Its settings are as follows:

Code:

LAN IP: 192.168.1.1 LAN Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 Wireless SSID: liquidstate Wireless Mode: 11g Only Wireless Channel: 11 Wireless Security: WPA2/PSK Wireless Pre-Shared Key:

I have a few devices connected to the Draytek 2700's LAN ports such as my Media Server and NAS. I also have a long CAT6 cable that leads to the other end of the house, where I have connected a new Draytek AP700. The AP700 is configured as follows:

Code:

LAN IP: 192.168.1.2 LAN Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 LAN Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1 (my Draytek 2700 router) Mode: AP Main SSID: liquidstate Band: 2.4Ghz (G) Channel Number: 11 Security: WPA-shared key WPA Mode: WPA2 (AES) Pre-shared Key Format: Passphrase Pre-shared key: (same as above)