Seamless Wifi Roaming

[MikeHiow]

So, I've bought some Cisco 1131s, mostly because that is what the previous occupants used - it worked and there are already mounting plates on the wall.

Now, I need to get wireless "roaming" setup so that someone may move between access points without drop outs (especially important for iPhone users with VoIP clients).

It seems the way you're supposed to do it is to set up one of the APs as a WDS Host, authenticating against a Radius server.

This is something I tried doing with NPS hoping to use their existing domain server, and I got as far as Group Policies for Certificate Autoenrollment and failed on the basis that there are no certificates on AD and I've no idea how to create one to be honest (I'm not a Windows Admin - completely clueless).

This got me thinking - the client is not going to want to mess around with certificates on their various different mobiles, laptops and Wifi SIP phones (if the latter even support them).

Is there a way this can be setup with simple WPA keys? I know you can give the APs all the same SSID but with different channels - this is a possible solution, but the inevitable drop out you get as the client device swaps networks is not going to be acceptable for VoIP.

Suggestions?

 

[dave-lew99]

While i can't speak for the Cisco APs, with RADIUS you don't have to have client certificates, but for ease of operation they will need to be able to verify the server certificate - one solution to that is to use a common trusted CA (like Verisign) which already has been setup on the device.

Then the devices will need to supply login info - it works great on windows with AD as it makes it single sign on. You might be in for some fun getting it to work properly with everything else though.

 

[sidethink]

If you're using VOIP across multiple APs shouldn't you really be using a Wireless Controller as well?

 

[bods]

Yes, we use a Cisco wireless controller [44xx / 55xx] combined with Windows IAS for device / user / certificate authentication. Roaming works fine.

 

[Skidilliplop]

Yup, if you're running VoIP over it you'll need a WLAN controller to maintain sessions and you'll need APs that support QoS