Large home, roaming wireless setup

[Nonprofit]

I moved into a large house recently and to make sure I had wireless coverage I setup several access points connected via MOCA.

The coverage is great, from the road outside our house all the way to the back of my back yard. Couldn't be happier about that.

Yet, I want to pull my hair out at least once a day...

Because of the issue of roaming.

Just walking from the living room to the kitchen with my iPhone means I have to intentionally disconnect from the living room AP and then reconnect to the AP that is closer to the kitchen. Our devices "stick" to the weaker signal unless we force them over.

I've tried different SSIDs and same. Doesn't matter (although different SSIDs is better since at least then I am sure what I'm connected to and can manually switch) - still a problem.

I'm thinking there must be a solution to this. Large companies with large offices probably don't put up with this. So, my question... is there any somewhat affordable, maybe small business level, solution that I can try to roll out at my house that will solve this problem? I understand it will cost more than consumer solutions, but I don't care. I find it THAT annoying. I'll pay to solve the problem.

Cisco, Sonicwall, Ubiquiti? Suggestions?

 

[abailey]

I moved into a large house recently and to make sure I had wireless coverage I setup several access points connected via MOCA.

The coverage is great, from the road outside our house all the way to the back of my back yard. Couldn't be happier about that.

Yet, I want to pull my hair out at least once a day...

Because of the issue of roaming.

Just walking from the living room to the kitchen with my iPhone means I have to intentionally disconnect from the living room AP and then reconnect to the AP that is closer to the kitchen. Our devices "stick" to the weaker signal unless we force them over.

I've tried different SSIDs and same. Doesn't matter (although different SSIDs is better since at least then I am sure what I'm connected to and can manually switch) - still a problem.

I'm thinking there must be a solution to this. Large companies with large offices probably don't put up with this. So, my question... is there any somewhat affordable, maybe small business level, solution that I can try to roll out at my house that will solve this problem? I understand it will cost more than consumer solutions, but I don't care. I find it THAT annoying. I'll pay to solve the problem.

Cisco, Sonicwall, Ubiquiti? Suggestions?

All of the Pro Gear I know where the controller can help manage the AP's to encourage devices to attach to the AP with the best signal are very expensive. I use Ubiquiti gear at my house. Ubiquiti does not have this feature (at least not yet). But what I did was turn down the power on my AP's so there is a more defined "line" where my device will hop to the next AP. I did have to add one more AP because once I turned down the power I needed to add an AP in a place that was not getting good coverage. I was skeptical that this would all work but decided to give it a try. To my surprise it works extremely well for me. It took me a couple of hours of testing and I had to move one AP to a different location, but in the end it was worth it to me.

 

[stevech]

I moved into a large house recently and to make sure I had wireless coverage I setup several access points connected via MOCA.

The coverage is great, from the road outside our house all the way to the back of my back yard. Couldn't be happier about that.

Yet, I want to pull my hair out at least once a day...

Because of the issue of roaming.

Just walking from the living room to the kitchen with my iPhone means I have to intentionally disconnect from the living room AP and then reconnect to the AP that is closer to the kitchen. Our devices "stick" to the weaker signal unless we force them over.

I've tried different SSIDs and same. Doesn't matter (although different SSIDs is better since at least then I am sure what I'm connected to and can manually switch) - still a problem.

I'm thinking there must be a solution to this. Large companies with large offices probably don't put up with this. So, my question... is there any somewhat affordable, maybe small business level, solution that I can try to roll out at my house that will solve this problem? I understand it will cost more than consumer solutions, but I don't care. I find it THAT annoying. I'll pay to solve the problem.

Cisco, Sonicwall, Ubiquiti? Suggestions?

Controller based WiFi gear is $$$. What you want is a network directed handoff, like cellular does. Requires special software on the client, and controllers. A compromise is special software on the client and special access points that broadcast a neighbor-AP list to help the client software decide when to re-associate. Cisco and Aruba do this.

So unfortunately... to my knowledge,

No way to automate best-AP reselection with consumer gear. Best you can do is give each WiFi access device (router included) a different SSID which is implicit: like your initials followed by room name. Then the user must choose the best AP manually.

 

[Nonprofit]

Well that is frustrating to read. With the explosion of mobile technology, I would think this is a common problem that would have been solved by now. I don't know about you guys, but I am walking around my house all day long. That means I am manually switching between access point... all day long. 2 dozen times, easily. Bedroom to kitchen, switch. Kitchen to office, switch. Office to living room, switch. Living room back to office, switch. On and on.

When Tim Cook walks around Apple campus with his iDevice I can't imagine he has to manually jump between different SSIDs. So how much $$$ are we talking for these business grade solutions? Several hundred dollars? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Anyone have any names of vendors and product lines that I should look into?

Regarding the power of my access points, I don't think I want to turn the power down on them, because then they would not extend as far out into the yard... which we like. But if that was something I wanted to try - how exactly would I go about it? Is that a common feature on consumer routers? Spent some time looking around the admin panels of my routers and didn't notice anything obvious that looked like a setting to do so.

Thanks!

 

[azazel1024]

Well that is frustrating to read. With the explosion of mobile technology, I would think this is a common problem that would have been solved by now. I don't know about you guys, but I am walking around my house all day long. That means I am manually switching between access point... all day long. 2 dozen times, easily. Bedroom to kitchen, switch. Kitchen to office, switch. Office to living room, switch. Living room back to office, switch. On and on.

When Tim Cook walks around Apple campus with his iDevice I can't imagine he has to manually jump between different SSIDs. So how much $$$ are we talking for these business grade solutions? Several hundred dollars? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Anyone have any names of vendors and product lines that I should look into?

Regarding the power of my access points, I don't think I want to turn the power down on them, because then they would not extend as far out into the yard... which we like. But if that was something I wanted to try - how exactly would I go about it? Is that a common feature on consumer routers? Spent some time looking around the admin panels of my routers and didn't notice anything obvious that looked like a setting to do so.

Thanks!

It is becoming a bigger issue and hopefully something everyone tackles sooner rather than later.

What it sounds like you need as an outdoor access point to cover your outside.

My current setup, I have two interior access points and one in my garage with antennas sitting outside as a backyard AP.

My devices roam pretty decently on the whole over my 2500sq-ft two level house with the router and AP on more or less opposite sides of the house. I have 2.4GHz radio on the AP turn to minimum and max on the 5GHz, the router it is turned to max on both bands. Works pretty well. My iDevices roam well.

The ONE exception to this is facetime. Switching APs ALWAYS causes the facetime session to be lost. This is an Apple issue 100%, not a router/wifi issue. All Apple would need to do is add the ability to auto resume the facetime session if it is lost, and at most what you might see is half a second of lost connection (once a client decides to reassociate, the entire disassociate/associate with new AP process takes between .3-.8s).

I've seen zero issues in page loads, email transfer, video STREAMING, audio streaming, file transfers, etc. They all work gracefully when roaming. I have no VOIP experience, but hopefully (PLEASE PEOPLE!) this is something that has been considered with VOIP LTE and VOIP Wifi calling with phones, as that is just now starting to roll out. I know they have Wifi to cell and cell to wifi VOIP roaming as a thing (because they'd be stupid not to), so I ASSUME (bad idea, I know) that they also have to tolerant of switching between wifi base stations too.

If you use seperate SSIDs, things will not roam at all. The other issue you can have is with placement, if there are locations where BOTH basestations have crummy reception, you won't roam.

Typically you need to be in the range of -55 to -60dBm (this would be about 4 of 5 bars in windows, on the edge of 2 of 3 bars in iOS) before a client will CONSIDER roaming to a new AP (and it MUST have the same SSID, otherwise it considers it a different network, in Windows you can generally toggle to allow roaming to a different network, but iOS and Android won't do this). Then, I dont know about iOS, but in windows with the MOST agressive roaming settings, the new base station must be at least 10dBm stronger signal strength. In my iOS and android testing, it seems like they go with more like 10-15dBm stronger signal strength to consider roaming.

So if your router/AP positioning is such that you wander from an area of high signal strength to an area of low signal strength and the second router/AP NEVER gets stronger than about 10dBm above the other router, no matter how weak the signal is for the first router, your client will not transition to the slightly better router.

The vague "issue" I have is with my new AP positioning, the signal strength is a lot higher from my AP, so now I have a lot of areas where things don't want to roam, though in my case no where does the signal get worse than very good in my house, even with the 2.4GHz radio power turned to minimal.

Stuff does roam though between them, just a bit of a difference in how/when. Would be a little less of an issue for me if everything was AC1750 like my router, but my AP is only N600 (for now).

Things love going to my outdoor AP though, but I also have exterior walls in the way breaking up the signal strength.

 

[Nonprofit]

Thanks for all of this info.

While poking around the internet trying to find solutions for this, I stumbled upon the following article right here on this very site.

"One of the challenges of multi-AP wireless networks is not all clients can seamlessly transition from a weak signal from one AP to a stronger signal from a closer AP. Sensitive devices, such as VoIP phones, could suffer performance problems such as call dropping while moving from one AP zone to another.

With UniFi's "Zero-Handoff" (ZH) roaming, multiple APs appear as a single virtual AP to the wireless client, thus the client doesn't have to switch APs as it roams. The UniFi system determines the optimal AP to provide the connection to the client. They can do this without the UniFi controller connected."

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...rise-wi-fi-platform-reviewed?showall=&start=3

This sounds exactly like what I am looking for.

Zero-handoff? Am I missing something? Is there a catch?

 

[azazel1024]

The only way to manage them is through java application running on a computer on the LAN/WLAN. It does not have to be actively running for the APs to work and for zero hand-off to work, but any management of the access points must be through that application (no web management page).

That is about the only real "issue". That and if you want dual band access points, the price is pretty expensive (~$300 each). The basic unify pucks with must 2.4GHz aren't that bad though, I think around $80 each.

 

[abailey]

Make sure you read up on the Unifi Zero handoff over at the Ubiquiti Forums. There are some catches to it. One catch is all the AP's must be on the same channel, which is not too bad if you have just a couple of devices using wireless. It can get congested fast if you have several devices and some are streaming video. Also the Ubiquiti AC WAP does not support Zero handoff yet.

 

[ascanio1]

Does the router too have to be from Ubiquiti or only the AP?

 

[azazel1024]

Does the router too have to be from Ubiquiti or only the AP?

Router does not have to be Ubiquity, but you cannot run a non-Ubiquity wifi basestation on the same network, at least not and have the zero hand-off work.

So whatever router you use, will either have to be a non-wifi router, or a wifi router with wifi turned off.

There are certainly some perks to the Unify/zero-handoff stuff, but it is more trade-off than I want to deal with (IE same channel, have to spin up something using a java app to manage if you need to make changes, etc).

 

[fistv]

Might want to look at the Motorola RFS 4000, I use one here in our 60,000sq ft humidor with 6 cisco cat type access points. At any one time there are 10 warehouse workers either on forklifts and foot moving all over the place with handheld pc/guns either pulling product or restocking, hand off is perfect. Cost of the controller/router is around a grand or so.

 

[stevech]

Might want to look at the Motorola RFS 4000, I use one here in our 60,000sq ft humidor with 6 cisco cat type access points. At any one time there are 10 warehouse workers either on forklifts and foot moving all over the place with handheld pc/guns either pulling product or restocking, hand off is perfect. Cost of the controller/router is around a grand or so.

On the client device side... Cisco used to (still does?) have their proprietary extensions to WiFi for directed handoff. Or you can have a special Cisco bridge onboard a forklift.

For a generic consumer device like a smartphone, this can be an issue.

 

[fistv]

On the client device side... Cisco used to (still does?) have their proprietary extensions to WiFi for directed handoff. Or you can have a special Cisco bridge onboard a forklift.

For a generic consumer device like a smartphone, this can be an issue.

Actually I've never tried to connect my iphone to it, did not have one when I did the install and I only go through there to shortcut from the restaurant to the shipping docks, it's a big assed farady cage with double steel insulated walls and roof, steel doors and 60F, I don't loiter . Configuration was minimal, just had to configure the wan port, turn on dhcp, plug it in, plug in the power injectors to PoE the cisco ap's, set the password and it was done. Took me about 40 min 3 years ago, after putting the ap's and night stick sized antennas 30 feet up on the rafter I beams and I have not touched it since.

 

[ascanio1]

Hmmm...not for me, then. I prefer to stick to my ASUS. I just spent a fortune!

Any chance that you ma have further advice from what has been given here, re the OP? I have the same problem and the solutions proposed in this thread are not 100%.

 

[Nonprofit]

Ordered two of the Unifi Long Range AP's - Should have them early next week.

I don't mind running the software on a local machine. I have one that stays on all the time anyway, and I will just install it there, or run it from a VM on that machine. That doesn't strike me as a big deal at all.

And it is very easy to turn off the wireless on my home router, so it acts as just a router. Having read the manual online, I don't anticipate any problems with the setup.

If this works even half as good as advertised, I will be one happy dude. I will make sure to report back here with thoughts and experiences once I get it up and running.

 

[abailey]

Since I have two Ubiquiti AP's I decided to give the Zero handoff a try last night. It was much easier to set up than I had thought. I upgraded the Unifi software (since I was still on an older version that did not support Zero Handoff) and then followed directions I found over on the Ubiquiti forums to get the Zero Handoff going. What I had previously done was turn down the power on my two radios and played with the strength of each until I got a pretty defined drop off from one to the other so my client devices would drop the weak signal and pick up the strong signal. This worked pretty good, in fact I was happy enough with that to not worry about Zero Handoff until this thread got me wondering. Ok so some observations:
Of course all radios have to be on the same channel (not a big deal to me as I only did Zero Handoff on the 2.4ghz band and I only have 5 devices that use that band).
You do not have the option to hide the SSID (also not a big deal as that really does not deter a hacker)
The guest network and multiple VLANs (as well as multiple SSID's) run fine under Zero Handoff.
Ok so how does it work? Well it works good as far as I can tell. I roamed around quite a bit doing streaming music, video, and Facetime and never dropped the signal. You could sometimes tell when you had switched AP's as there would be a stutter in the video. When doing a continuous ping I would not miss any pings but the ping time would go way up while you were switching AP's (one to two pings). Now I don't know how it determines what AP to put you on. There were several times that another AP had stronger signal and would have given me more throughput but it left me on a slightly weaker AP. It was fine as it never waited until my bandwidth was so low that my video's would start buffering or anything. Anyway I think I will leave it like this for the time being and see how it goes.
I wish Ubiquiti had a setting you could turn on for a minimum signal level before it knocked you off. It currently has a minimum signal level to attach. But if you are close and attach, then walk away and have a weak signal, the AP will not knock you off. They say it is on the roadmap but who knows when that will come to pass. If you had that you could set up a network where clients roam more easily than now, without using Zero Handoff and being stuck with a single channel.

 

[Nonprofit]

Hi all,

Just a quick update.

The APs arrived and were a breeze to setup... actually, kind of fun. If setting up access points can be considered fun.

The controller software is working, and I am pretty impressed with it. I don't have a lot of experience with enterprise grade wifi systems, but this seems to have an abundance of cool features. The amount of info available about the wireless network is great. Can see what devices are connecting to what access points, how strong those connections are, how much activity (up and down) each device is responsible for, etc.

Zero Handoff is as advertised. I can walk around my house now without having to switch between SSIDS or lose connection due to the device hanging on to the weakest access point. This is the game changer for me. It doesn't always "feel" as smooth as I expected though. If I am actively clicking links on a website, I can tell when it is switching or thinking about it as the site will hang. Still vastly improved over what I had.

I am running the controller software on my main desktop computer. It stays on most of the time anyway, and Java was already installed (for a web conferencing product my organization uses).

The ONLY wee bit of disappointment I've had so far is related to the range. I got the LR (long range) model and was expecting serious improvement over my consumer Netgear WNR2500, but in at least one location the range actually seems less. When I walk out to the edge of my property with my iPhone, I have no signal at all with the Unifi AP, whereas I had 1 bar of weak connection with the Netgear WNR2500. This was surprising to me.

 

[abailey]

Hi all,

Just a quick update.

The APs arrived and were a breeze to setup... actually, kind of fun. If setting up access points can be considered fun.

The controller software is working, and I am pretty impressed with it. I don't have a lot of experience with enterprise grade wifi systems, but this seems to have an abundance of cool features. The amount of info available about the wireless network is great. Can see what devices are connecting to what access points, how strong those connections are, how much activity (up and down) each device is responsible for, etc.

Zero Handoff is as advertised. I can walk around my house now without having to switch between SSIDS or lose connection due to the device hanging on to the weakest access point. This is the game changer for me. It doesn't always "feel" as smooth as I expected though. If I am actively clicking links on a website, I can tell when it is switching or thinking about it as the site will hang. Still vastly improved over what I had.

I am running the controller software on my main desktop computer. It stays on most of the time anyway, and Java was already installed (for a web conferencing product my organization uses).

The ONLY wee bit of disappointment I've had so far is related to the range. I got the LR (long range) model and was expecting serious improvement over my consumer Netgear WNR2500, but in at least one location the range actually seems less. When I walk out to the edge of my property with my iPhone, I have no signal at all with the Unifi AP, whereas I had 1 bar of weak connection with the Netgear WNR2500. This was surprising to me.

What software version are you using? If your using 3.2.1 then the Zero Handoff is partially broken. I was having the same problems as you with there being pauses sometimes when I click links. This is due to the Unifi system flapping back and forth between AP's. It is supposed to be fixed in the next release. You can also downgrade or email the Ubiquiti employee in this thread for the fix: http://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-...2-1-seems-to-break-ZH-reliability/td-p/890814
As far as range goes, my AP-LR greatly improved my range. How do you have it mounted? It works best mounted on the ceiling but does work okay mounted vertically on a wall.

 

[stevech]

As far as range goes, my AP-LR greatly improved my range. How do you have it mounted? It works best mounted on the ceiling but does work okay mounted vertically on a wall.

An industry issue is the lack of definition of a signal strength "Bar". Engineering units for this are dBm (received power measured on a log scale relative to 1 milliwatt = 0dBm.
Converting dBm to bars is a math transform that is arbitrary. So is dBm to percent as displayed by some products.

One large phone manufacturer famously got nailed for fudging the bars, meaning there was blatant exaggeration.

So down at "one bar", there are fudges and round-offs and so on.

And what is equally important is the signal strength of the handheld at the access point or WiFi router. That's not normally displayed. Often the handheld has lower transmitted power

 

[Nonprofit]

What software version are you using? If your using 3.2.1 then the Zero Handoff is partially broken.

Thanks for this info. I just upgraded to the latest Beta, 3.2.5 and was told it will be released next week.

As far as range goes, my AP-LR greatly improved my range. How do you have it mounted? It works best mounted on the ceiling but does work okay mounted vertically on a wall.

It is wall mounted. Ceiling isn't an option for me in this room, unfortunately. I tried it in several different locations and heights. The Netgear that offered better range just sits on a table about waist high. The Unifi AP is vertically mounted on the wall next to that table, a few feet above it.

It covers the house and the deck fine, which is what I care about the most. But if I walk 100 feet or so out into my yard (the LR advertises a range of 600 feet), the signal from the Unifi doesn't even register on my iPhone. Can't even connect to it. Whereas the Netgear gave me a signal... a weak signal, but one I could connect to.