With an enterprise-class Wi-Fi system the access points, either between each other, or via a controller, manage the handoff clients using PMK so that the arriving client doesn't need to go through the full connection process. (http://www.networkcomputing.com/mobile/archives/mobile_archive_112305.html) That's with L2 connections. And, as another poster already wrote, when traveling across L3 boundaries an enterprise-class system can tunnel the client's connection back to the original AP or to a controller, so that there's no disruption to the client.
In regards to load-balancing, original methods involved the AP either not responding to probes and/or association requests, or disassociating connected clients. IEEE 802.11k has added some additional awareness, but I'm not sure how much/well that has been implemented into products. Frank -----Original Message----- From: David Lang [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 7:03 PM To: Frank Bulk Cc: [email protected]; Roy McMorran Subject: RE: [lopsa-tech] Wifi On Sat, 6 Apr 2013, Frank Bulk wrote: > The problem with scaling with consumer grade APs is that they lack > - manageability > - automatic channel management > - coordinated RF power control I see these as all being related, and running OpenWRT on the APs so that they are 'just linux boxes', with all the management tools that are implied by that, goes a LONG way towards solving these issues as far as I am concerned. Personally, I don't want "automatic channel management" because I've seen too many cases where things like this turn into an endless reconfiguration cycle. Central administration of channel management is pretty trivial. > - support for smooth handoffs When you say "support for smooth handoffs", how is a handoff between Enterprise APs better than between consumer APs that have the same SSID? > - coordinated load balancing of traffic and clients Coordinated load balancing requires changing the client side of things, or trying to trick the client side to do what you want by selectivly not responding to the client until the client gives up and tries something that you do want to respond to. Or am I missing something? > - PoE-based powered There are also devices available that run OpenWRT that are PoE powered, outdoor sealed, etc that are still dirt cheap compared to the "Enterprise" APs > - plenum rating probably correct, although like PoE, there are also probably appropriate devices available > - support by Voice over Wi-Fi handset vendors > - technical support Support is valid, but by that argument you aren't running Linux either right? :-) David Lang > > Frank > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On > Behalf Of David Lang > Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2013 2:48 PM > To: Roy McMorran > Cc: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [lopsa-tech] Wifi > > <snip> > > In short, I like to go with cheap (i.e. consumer grade) APs because they > give me > great flexibility when loaded with openwrt > > 1. they can be managed with the normal *nix management tools (including > logging) > > 2. since they are cheap, you don't agonize over how many you deploy, if you > think you need a few more, you just put them in place. > > 3. by picking ones that can run openwrt, you future proof yourself by not > locking yourself into any one vendor's equipment or any one vendor's > management. > Yes, it's nicer to have all the APs the same, even with openwrt, but it's > like > your linux servers. It's nice when they are all the same, but it's not that > much > worse if you have a few different generations of systems where each > generation > is a different vendor. > > You absolutly do want to use one SSID, not several. > > For the staff, you can either add an additional SSID, or you can have the > staff > use VPNs to connect from the general use one. There are advantages to both. > > David Lang > _______________________________________________ > Tech mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ > > > _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
