Using Multiple 871W Routers to Create a Single Wireless Network

[burritonator]

My company purchased 5 Cisco 871 W Wireless routers, and we'd like to configure them to act as single wireless LAN so that users can move around the building with their wireless devices and not experience an interruption in their connection. What do we need to do to make that happen?

[mat.edwards]

This will work fine as long as you are only performing layer 2 roaming. If each 871s WLAN resides within a different subnet the client will need to pick up a new IP address each time it moves between Routers.

If all Routers are configured within the same client subnet then the SSID and security settings will also need to match on each 871.

Bear in mind if you are using 802.1x auth then a full re-auth will be required for each roam as there is no central key management which will increase latency.

Lastly AP placement and channel settings are most important, remember for data to have a cell boundary of -75dBm with a cell overlap of 10% sticking to channels 1,6,11.

Will you be running voice on the WLAN?

Hope this helps.

Mat

[burritonator]

Thank you very much for the information. This helps a lot. We're not planning to run voice on the WLAN, only data.