Replacing company's WiFi routers for the 3th time in 2 years. Proper advice wanted :)

[Freek]

Hello,

I'm replacing our company's WiFi routers for the 3th time now in 2 years. Currently, we have 4 Draytek AP800 WiFi AccessPoints, as we had good experiences with Draytek in the past. However, these access-points have caused our nothing but trouble; They reboot randomly every 48 hours. Apparently, after a lot of troubleshooting and research, according to Draytek, these access-points do not support wireless roaming and if used for wireless roaming, will cause interference and will reboot randomly. Great...
Therefore, we are looking to replace these 4 routers/access points with proper ones that do support wireless roaming; We have 2 SSIDs (private and guest), shared among those 4 routers/access points using the same encryption but using different channels (1, 6 and 11).
Our demands are pretty standard; We do not use fancy features as VPN, we just want a functional WiFi network with a decent range and wireless roaming (i.e. 2 SSIDs with multiple access points). If possible, the guest network should have it's own DHCP range. Note that for SSID1 I should be able to disable the DHCP server, as the routers/access points will be connected to our exisiting wired network with it's own DHCP server.
Our WiFi is mainly being used to surf the internet, send mails and printjobs to our printer. Our internet speeds are quite low at 20Mbit/20Mbit
Our company has about 10 wireless clients, although spread about a large area, hence the multiple accesspoints/wireless clients.
Our budget is around 150$ per access point/router.

I'm looking forward to your recommendations. Personally I've found the ASUS RT-N66U Dark Knight to be suitable, although I was unable to find if it support wireless roaming.

Thanks in advance!

Kind regards.

 

[stevech]

Wireless roaming.. You were given bad advice.
WiFi APs that DO NOT rely on a central controller (as is the case, I believe, with what you have), have no special means for WiFi roaming. There are, essentially two forms of roaming:
1) Change AP only upon loss of service - due to a client moving out of coverage. This is what all WiFi devices do. Note that AP #1 will be used if it has a weak signal and AP #2 is much closer. This is not fast roaming or best-AP roaming.
2) Best AP/fast roaming: This requires that APs be managed by a central controller. Typically this is used for large enterprises with dozens of APs. Cisco and Aruba dominate this market.

So in (1), there is no "roaming", just a failure to communicate leading to a reconnection, or the user is burdened with choosing a new AP.

Sorry to say, but your company, to ensure proper security, and get what they want, should pay for a professional to learn your requirements and give you a solution with 2+ vendor options from which you can choose. And an option to install/configure. This is serious, as done wrong, your system security can be compromised.

 

[Freek]

Thanks for your fast reply, stevech.
I was already suspecting Draytek was telling me bogus, so I am not surprised you confirm this.
I will see what options I have given the budget.

Thanks

 

[thiggins]

You might take a look at Ubiquiti. The UniFi system has everything you need and the 2.4 GHz APs aren't that expensive.