Question

Wifi computer will not connect to nearest AP

Asked by: cah00ts

We have some wireless computers set up on mobile carts in long building with an access point on each end.
The machines will connect to their nearest access point ok and the signal is strong. However if you move them to the opposite end of the building the signal deteriorates, they keep their connection  to the furthest AP and do not pick up the signal from the nearest AP.
If you recan the network and connect again then it will see the nearest AP and connect but we can't ask the users to do this each time.

The machines have AboCom wireless miniPCI cards installed. The software provided with the wifi cards is RaLink and it does not look like it can be configured to remedy this in any way.

I have spoken to the IT dept in the building but they say there is nothing they can do on the AP side.

Is there a utility I can install on the machines that will ge this to work?

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Asked On
2009-09-15 at 08:08:05ID24733183
Tags

Wireless network

,

wifi

Topics

802.11 Wireless Access Points

,

802.11x

,

Wireless Local Area Network

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: d0n7_5h007Posted on 2009-09-15 at 08:29:26ID: 25335984

For it to work as you expect all of the WAP's will need the same SSID. are they the same? if not it wont connect to another WAP until it loses connection.

 

by: cah00tsPosted on 2009-09-15 at 11:31:44ID: 25337791

Yes they all have the same SSID.

 

by: d0n7_5h007Posted on 2009-09-15 at 12:33:25ID: 25338426

Have you tried disabling the RALINK util and using windows zero configuration? Normally there is a option in wifi utils to disable its and use windows zero configuration. if not disable the util and start windows zero configuration from services.

See if it works using that.

 

by: cah00tsPosted on 2009-09-15 at 15:19:17ID: 25340224

Yes I have tried using windows zero config but same problem

 

by: naykamPosted on 2009-09-15 at 23:26:37ID: 25342460

I love this quote..haha...
"I have spoken to the IT dept in the building but they say there is nothing they can do.."

They are right to an extent.
Obviously its not software related if you have tried 2 packages, and I would assume that correct.

Go into your wireless adapter properties, and select "configure" on the adapter. You wan to find options under the advanced tab. You are looking for settings such as "roaming" or "roaming aggressiveness". These settings are usually set to default, and tend to hold on to an AP as long as possible. You want to set these settings to a higher setting, so your wireless adapters become more aggressive and roam to louder talking AP's.

You could get software such as netstumbler this will give you the received signal strength of each AP. If both your AP's are metering around the same at either end - you should look into turning the AP's down. This would aslo explain why they are not roaming effectively

 

by: cah00tsPosted on 2009-09-16 at 08:14:04ID: 31628966

Hi Naykam,
Thanks you pointed me in the right direction.
I went into the wireless adapter properties.
There was a setting called Auto Channel Select. I changed this from Disable to Enable.
There was one called Smartscan also. I enabled this too.
This did the trick.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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