WLAN Assignment Over Multiple Floors

exonetinf1nity · ‎07-11-2008

Greetings, i have a client who has a number of laptops that will be used across several floors in the same building. The client laptops will physically move location each time they are used but dont need to roam between floors.

Im having to use WPA2 PSk's for authentication and encryption as radius/certificates arnt an option at present.

Would you say it be better to just configure a single WLAN for all floors with a global PSK or separate WLAN's for each floor along with separate PSK's? Which would in turn be configured on the client machines manually?

This is more of a design question really, but any advice would be appreciated.

Regards

Scott Fella · ‎07-11-2008

Are the ap's autonomous or lwapp?

-Scott
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exonetinf1nity · ‎07-11-2008

Apologies they will be lightweight distributed across two controllers.

Scott Fella · ‎07-11-2008

You can always use ap groups. This way you can have one ssid tied to multiple subnets (one subnet per floor). Depending on how many devices, you can always go with one ssid all in one subnet. Keep the ssid and encryption the same just in case. How much does the signal bleed through the floors?

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk722/tk809/technologies_configuration_example09186a008073c723.shtml

-Scott
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exonetinf1nity · ‎07-11-2008

Cheers for the information, i haven't been able to undertake a wireless survey unfortunately but the floor and ceiling is approx 3 feet of solid concrete so i dont imagine there be any crossover between the floors.

Scott Fella · ‎07-11-2008

It deends on number of users. I don't like to have a subnet larger than a class C, in some cases I have had subnets deployed that are a /23. So this is where you need to assume how many devices per floor on a given subnet. If you have around 200 devices that will use psk, then one ssid and on subnet.

-Scott
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