AP Roaming Consistency With Multiple Floors?

[greyeax]

Hey there, I'm trying to decide whether or not to consolidate the multiple floors in my org that each has their own WiFi network, in the vein of Org 1F, Org 2F, Org 3F, and so on. The issue is that the networks reach into other floors, and people will go to the 3rd floor while still being connected to the second floor. The idea is that if I consolidate them, then the Meraki hardware will automatically handle the roaming aspects of this, but I'm not sure if it works very well.

Has anyone else had to deal with a similar situation and have any suggestions? Do you keep your floors separated or do you have them all connected and let Meraki handle the roaming?

Thanks!

[cmr]

One of our venues has 5 floors and they are all on the same network.  In UK buildings the vertical signal is often better than the horizontal (thick walls, feeble floors) and we would need at least double the APs if we segregated by floor.

Is there a reason you want the devices to use an AP on their floor, device count etc.?

[randhall]

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@cmr wrote:

Is there a reason you want the devices to use an AP on their floor, device count etc.?

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This is probably a carryover from experience with other wireless vendors. In my testing I've seen some vendors want to create small management domains like this...but I'm sure they (somehow) must have policy that efficiently glues those domains together for roaming and other things.

I would suggest using Tags to facilitate managing smaller groupings.

[NolanHerring]

I would personally not do that. Think of the floor as just another wall.
FOR sure do not create different ORGs for this, that is overkill. You could accomplish the same thing with just different SSID's

If you were talking about using the same SSID which is why you would need separate ORGs/networks, that would also hurt. Clients will roam to whoever they want to, they are 100% in charge of that, and if they go from AP on floor 1 to AP on floor 2, but with the same SSID but different ORG, its going to create a hard roam, not smooth, and just be a nightmare.

One SSID, across all floors, preferably 5GHz only. Reign in your power, make sure AutoRF is tuned, and make sure the subnet is hopefuly the same L2 VLAN to allow for super smooth roaming no matter where a client connects. Assuming you can do that scope size wise etc.

[Uberseehandel]

I absolutely agree with what Nolan has posted.

Successful WiFi communications depend upon both AP and client device being able to hear each other.

Experience shows that the practice of deploying a few powerful, "shouty" AP throughout buildings is a very poor paradigm for available, reliable WiFi-based services.

A better approach will include carry out the following

• identify those areas which require WiFi-services and provide small APs with reduced TX volumes to each of those areas (I've even put APs in elevators, but that was "unofficial")
• unless devices are mobile, wire them
• put smart devices on their own VLAN
• separate voice and video traffic into their own VLANs
• contain multicast/Bonjour/Chromecast traffic in separate VLANs - you may need to have a separate SSID for controlling these systems from a mobile device.
• do not use LAN1/VLAN1 - set up a management VLAN
• explicitly declare the VLANs that are passed by individual uplinks
• set up a room 101 - (the great bit bucket in the sky) - make sure it goes nowhere and use it where configurations require that a VLAN ID be specified
• with existing technology avoid wireless uplinking of APs - it halves performance

[randhall]

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@Uberseehandel wrote:

• unless devices are mobile, wire them

Sooooooooooooooooo underrated!!!!