Same SSID, different Vendors

[tonyp8581]

Hi,

Has anybody in this forum ever deployed a wireless network with the same SSID, but using 2 different vendors.

We have a warehouse and office space separated with concrete wall.  In the warehouse, we have one vendor

and in office, we have another vendor.  We want to use the same SSID in order to facilitate roaming.

Is this feasible?

Thx

[Scott Fella]

It will not work well in some environments. Two separate systems, lightweight and autonomous does not communicate with each other to support roaming.

If you have standalone access points using open or maybe preshared key, then it can work since each roam required a full reauth. As long as the users are in the same subnet, it can work. If your using 802.1x then the roam will be very slow due to full reauths.

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[tonyp8581]

Hi Scott,

thx for your response.  I was planning to use 802.1x, but I figured the roaming would not be seamless.

For discussion purposes, if I would choose psk, and the endpoint is in range of both vendors (strong signal),

who would win ?

[Scott Fella]

The clients will decide which ap it will associate to. Roaming only occurs when the client side device algorithm triggers a roam. This isn't decided by vendor access points.

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[Abha Jha]

It will work if same security configuration but seamless roaming will not work always.

[tonyp8581]

Thanks for your input guys,  I'll steer away from that option.

Cheers !

[Scott Fella]

Yeah... I would personally never implement a mixed vendor wireless.

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