WIFI Roaming / Wireless Roaming

Setting up your wireless network with multiple access points can be painful if you do not know a trick or two to set up “wireless roaming”

In order to avoid dealing with multiple SSID’s on a wireless network with multiple access points you simply have to give all the access points the same SSID & Keys but you need to make sure that the channels to not overlap.

The short version is that you have 3 channels that do not overlap in most countries/regions. 1,6,11. In short if you have 3 access points then you have nothing to worry about since you have enough channels.

If however you need to use more than 3 access points you will need to make sure that channels do not touch each other in your coverage area for example make sure that two access points using the same channel are not close to each other in your design.

You could for example cover an entire office block like this if you spent some time making sure that you do not let overlapping channels come into contact with each other.

The channels overlap as follows; notice how it can limit the cheap wireless roaming solution.

Your wireless client or device will automatically roam between multiple access points or routers and select the best signal at all times.

The main advantage here is that you only need to configure the device once since the SSID and Encryption settings are the same which can be a big time saver if you are trying to cover a large area with WIFI.

And there you have it, the simple and cheap way to get wireless roaming at home or at the office.

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