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InstantWave
11-Mbps
Wireless Access Point
19
Roaming
InstantWave products allow wireless stations to roam freely within an infrastructure
domain composed of multiple APs with overlapping signal coverage (as in the Type
3 network configuration described in the previous section). For example, roaming
enables Station 1 to move from the AP 1 signal coverage area to the AP 2 signal
coverage area without disconnecting from the network. The handover is achieved
transparently; the Station 1 user would not realize he had moved from AP 1 to AP 2.
The requirements for a roaming environment are:
a) Multiple APs with overlapping signal coverage (see “Multiple AP
Installation,” page 18)
b) The APs must be configured to have the same domain name (SSID) and
security (WEP) settings (see “Encryption,” page 27).
c) The mobile stations must have the same domain name (SSID) and security
(WEP) settings as the APs.
It is advisable that APs on different TCP/IP subnets be given different domain names
to avoid roaming confusion (see the note below).
Note: For a mobile station to move between APs without losing its network link, the
Roaming function must be enabled on the station, and the APs that the station
roams to must be configured with the same domain name. If a station detects
that the signal quality on the link to the current AP is poor, it will search for
an AP in the same domain with better signal quality and automatically
associate (establish a connection) with it. The station’s IP address, however,
will not change. A TCP/IP router will not route packets to a mobile station
that has associated with an AP on a different TCP/IP subnet. In other words,
if your network consists of two subnets connected by a router, a mobile station
may roam to a different subnet with the same domain name and then be
unable to communicate with other network devices via TCP/IP. To avoid this
problem, you must assign different domain names to different TCP/IP subnets.