Seamless roaming wifi zyxel keenetic. Seamless wifi roaming with capsman v2 in Mikrotik. Which devices support seamless Wi-Fi

In a corporate environment, WiFi is playing an increasingly prominent function and is playing an ever-increasing role. You can connect a smartphone or tablet to WiFi, but, more importantly, a corporate phone, a mobile data collection terminal or an online cash register for receiving payments and printing checks. It’s good if the WiFi coverage area your business needs is small and you can get by with an ordinary inexpensive access point, but what if wireless communication need to cover thousands of square meters on multiple floors? There are certainly options.

Firstly, you can "spawn" many WiFi networks on a variety of standalone access points. The option is bad because such an economy is difficult and inconvenient to manage, when moving around the territory of the enterprise, some mobile devices you will have to switch between these networks manually, and, most importantly, all this will have to be explained to users who are not always well understood in IT, and are simply unable to absorb these wisdoms. There is only one advantage to this solution: it is cheap.

Secondly, can broadcast one WiFi network using the same type of standalone access points with support for WDS technology. The main disadvantage of such a solution is that the overwhelming, absolute and unconditional majority of more or less affordable (up to 300 USD) access points from popular vendors work ugly in WDS mode. Broadcasting can be lost and restored, connectivity between primary and dependent access points will be disrupted, and mobile devices will lose connection and, with it, their functional characteristics. So it's better to leave this option for real samurai.

Ideologically and technologically, the correct option is to use a controller and dependent access points. This option is called "seamless WiFi". Its essence is that there can be many access points, and one centralized controller device is responsible for managing them and their broadcasting. Controller:

• monitors the status of slave access points, the load on them;
• regulates the signal strength and bandwidth depending on the number of clients and the nature of their work;
• independently restores areas unserved due to equipment failures by increasing the coverage area from nearby access points;
• provides web authentication and dynamic Accounts for the implementation of the so-called. "guest access" (some controllers have options like printers to generate and print temporary user credentials);
• provides fast roaming, with which you can freely move, for example, with a WiFi phone between coverage areas of different access points, without interrupting the conversation and without observing any interruptions in communication. At the same time, the controller "sets" a signal from the closest access point to your device in a timely manner.

Modern controllers allow you to connect access points via WiFi in repeater mode (the so-called Mesh technology) without a cable connection to the network, and also provide integration with related IT systems (for example, Active Directory, location services, etc.).

How to build seamless Wi-Fi

In our catalog of solutions, options for household, corporate and industry-specific WiFi solutions have already been carefully selected and described: . And if you go "on top", then the most successful options for seamless Wi-Fi on the market are represented by the following vendors:

2. Another American manufacturer reigns in the middle-end segment - . Relatively inexpensive, Cambium is also known for its reliability and high performance.

Similar to Ruckus Unleashed, Cambium can also operate in controllerless network management mode. Cambium calls this ecosystem autoPilot and supports up to 32 network access points and up to 1000 wireless clients. Functionally, it is almost as good as the version with a controller, moreover, it does not require any investment, in addition to buying the access points themselves, you do not need to buy licenses, service contracts and their updates.

Need faster, higher, stronger? Please! Free cloud cnMaestro controller already supports up to 4000 access points and up to 25000 wireless clients. The software can be completely free to install on your own server if your beliefs do not allow you to use cloud solutions. With the functionality of Cambium, everything is also in order: here you have centralized management of the ecosystem, and services of geolocation, analytics, radio analysis, integration with related systems ... in general, everything your soul desires.

The disadvantage of Cambium can be considered a relatively poor line of access points: . Although everything you need is present in it: there are access points with sector antennas, supporting 802.11ac Wave 2, MU-MIMO 4x4:4, outdoor and indoor. In general, a complete gentleman's set at your service!

3. In the budget segment, the competition is much higher, but we single out TP-LINK among other daring Chinese. This is the main and most interesting competitor of Ubiquiti (which will be discussed below), although such a comparison in 2019 for TP-LINK is no longer flattering.

First, let's deal with the TP-LINK label itself: actually there are two of them. There is TP-LINK, which makes cheap home routers and plastic switches, and there is TP-LINK, which makes Enterprise line products - WiFi systems, Smart series switches, accessories for them. These are, in fact, 2 different companies, because. there are no intersection points between these two directions neither in the field of scientific developments, nor in production lines. And, for the sake of objectivity, Enterprise TP-LINK is much higher quality than its younger brother, specializing in products for SOHO.

Now to WiFi. TP-LINK has Auranet CAP line- currently in some oblivion (but this is temporary). Solution ceiling - 500 access points, 10,000 wireless clients. Controllers - only hardware, for 50 or 500 access points. Access points - in a rather old, "clumsy" design, but with support for honest seamless roaming in accordance with 802.11k / v standards, Beamforming, Band Steering, Airtime Fairness - in general, the set is completely complete. High Density on TP-LINK, of course, cannot be provided, but we have already served events for 200-300 users in one room, and this did not cause any complaints from customers.

TP-LINK's second ecosystem is called Omada, it introduces the EAP series access points. The controller - Omada Controller - is available in hardware version (with a limit of 50 access points in the 1st network), but there is also a software version that can be installed on a server under Windows control or Linux. EAPs look modern and, of course, do everything that a self-respecting access point needs to be able to do in 2019.

4. Our next patient is Ubiquiti of the UniFi series. This is when you want beautiful and cheap. And "beautiful" with Ubiquiti will be constantly, tk. they have everything subject to design: from packaging to design of control interfaces. And the design is truly one of the best in the industry. In general, Ubiquiti products are characterized by an extremely low price with a fairly high quality of the product as a whole.

The main disadvantage of Ubiquiti is that it still does not support truly seamless WiFi roaming in accordance with IEEE standards, offering its proprietary implementation instead. Which works, well, let's say, so-so. So if you need to get your WiFi clients to roam seamlessly with voice or video applications, then Ubiquiti, sadly, is not for you. The same goes for High Density - it's not about Ubiquiti. In general, Ubiquiti is far from ideal in the radio part, but thanks to a powerful component base, a very wide range of equipment and the right marketing policy, they are still one of the most popular manufacturers of WiFi solutions. In Russia, Ubiquiti reveals 2 more significant drawbacks: the lack of an official service and representation. The first means that the guarantee on the territory of the Russian Federation works a little better than nothing, and the second means that you will not have technical support or certificates for equipment (which closes its way to state-owned enterprises and telecom operators).

The advantage of Ubiquiti is in their UniFi ecosystem, which now includes not only WiFi equipment, but also switches, routers, video surveillance, telephony, and more recently even some smart home components. Moreover, the management of all this economy is available through very beautiful and convenient applications (including mobile ones) that integrate with the Ubiquiti "cloud", i.е. You can "steer" the UniFi ecosystem from anywhere in the world, and this is without any dancing with port forwarding, static IP addresses and other leapfrog. All in all, it's really convenient.

5. Mikrotik, Edimax, Wisnetworks, TG-NET, etc. We add the 5th item in this list only because the number 5 is more beautiful than 4. Well, or it has a better reputation. Objectively, the vendors listed here still do not even reach the level of Ubiquiti (they may not be worse, but by the combination of factors of their perception by the market they are still not so significant), but they still occupy some niche in the market and enjoy some popularity.

Let's brag boldly: we have accumulated extensive experience in deploying large Wi-Fi networks, we managed to "feel" the most diverse solutions of most specialized vendors live, and we know their strengths and pitfalls. We are ready to apply our experience for the design and installation of wireless networks in your enterprise. - save your time and money!

In this article, we will learn how to create a single seamless WiFi network on routers MikroTik / Mikrotik. Where can it be useful? For example, in various cafes or hotels, where one wifi router not enough to cover all the premises and access to the Internet, and with a large number of access points, various kinds of problems constantly arise: laptops constantly lose connection, and mobile devices do not switch on their own to the nearest access point.

The solution to this situation is seamless WiFi network roaming or handover, which we can get thanks to the CapsMan functionality from several Mikrotik routers, one of which will be a WiFi controller, and the rest will be access points controlled by this controller.

The first thing to do is to upgrade to latest version ON. The firmware can be downloaded from the official website. Next, going into the MikroTik interface, drag it to the Files section and reboot the router. Along with the firmware, you also need to download the Wireless CAPs MAN package, drag it to the same place and reboot. After the actions taken, you can proceed to the configuration.

Let's start with the controller. Open the CAPsMAN section by pressing the corresponding button in the main menu. In the Interfaces tab, click the Manager button (turn on the controller mode) and in the window that appears, check the Enable checkbox, save OK. After that, go to the Configurations tab.

The configuration settings will apply to all access points connected to the controller. Click the blue cross and in the Wireless tab specify the configuration name (3), wireless network mode (4), network name (5), and also turn on all wireless antennas for reception and transmission (6), save (7) and go to the Channel tab .

Here we indicate the frequency (2), the broadcast format of the wireless network (3) and the channel (4). We save (5) and go to the Datapath tab.

Here we only need to check the Local Forwarding checkbox - this will transfer traffic control to access points. It remains to fill in the last tab Security.

In the security section, select the type of authentication, encryption method and password for the wireless network, click OK.

After we have created the configuration, we move on to the next step - deployment. In the same CAPsMAN section, select the Provisioning tab (1) and click the blue cross. The Radio MAC field (2) allows you to select a specific access point to which our deployment will refer. We leave it by default so that the deployment applies to all access points. In the next Action (3) field, select createdynamicenabled, since we have a dynamic interface. In Master Configuration (4) we specify the name of the configuration created above.

With the CAPsMAN section finished, go to the Wireless section (1). In the Interfaces tab, press the CAP (3) button, check the Enabled (4) checkbox, select the wlan1 interface and specify the ip-address of our main router, which is also a controller.

If we did everything correctly, then two red lines will appear in the Interfaces tab, which indicate that the wi-fi adapter has connected to the controller and adopted all the necessary settings.

This completes the configuration of the main router-controller, and this network can be used to create telephone network and connection to PBX

Setting up access points that will connect to the controller via an Ethernet cable is quite simple. They also need to be flashed to the latest version and installed CAPs MAN. Next, we combine all the ports and the wi-fi interface into one Bridge in the section of the same name.

The next step in the Wireless section is the same as on the controller, except that instead of the IP address in CAPs MAN Addresses, we indicate the Bridge created on the access point in the Discovery Interfaces field. After the manipulations have been done, the access point will receive the settings from the controller and will distribute wi-fi (the same two red lines should appear in the Interfaces tab).

Introduction

As I said, I have on the subject of capsman settings in mikrotik. Nowadays, due to the speed of information technology development, information becomes outdated very quickly. And although the article is still relevant, it is regularly read and used, now there is something to add to it.

Came out a new version Technology Controlled Access Point system Manager (CAPsMAN) v2. I will tell you a little about her. In my work, I will rely on the experience of the previous article and on the official Manual: CAPsMAN from the website of the Mikrotik manufacturer.

I will have 2 RB951G-2HnD routers at my disposal, which are in accordance with my recommendations on this topic. I recommend, just in case, to familiarize yourself with them so that there is a general idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe basic settings of routers. On one of these routers, I will configure the access point controller, and I will connect the other to this controller. Both points form a single seamless wifi network with automatic switching of clients to the nearest point.

An example of two access points will be enough for a general idea of ​​how the technology works. Further, this setting is linearly scaled by the required number of access points.

What is capsman v2

To begin with, I will tell you what capsman v2 is and how it differs from the first version. It should be said right away that there is no compatibility between the two versions. If you have a v2 controller, then only access points with the same version can connect to it. And vice versa - if you have v2 points, you will not be able to connect to the controller of the first version.

CAPsMAN v2 has a different package name in the system − wireless cm2. It has appeared in the system since RouterOS v6.22rc7. The previous version was called wireless-fp and was introduced in v6.11. If you don't have a new package, down to the latest one.

List of capsman v2 innovations:

• The ability to automatically update managed access points.
• The protocol for information exchange between the controller and access points has been improved.
• Added "Name Format" and "Name Prefix" fields in the Provision rules settings.
• Improved logging of client switching process from point to point.
• Added L2 Path MTU discovery.

If you already have capsman configured on your network, then the developers suggest the following way to upgrade your entire network to v2:

1. Set up a temporary capsman v2 controller on the source network.
2. You start gradually updating your managed access points to install the wireless-cm2 package in them. All updated access points will connect to the temporary controller.
3. After all managed access points are updated to the latest version, update the main capsman controller. After this happens, turn off the temporary controller.

There is an easier way if you are not critical of a simple network for a while. Simultaneously run the update on all routers - both on the controller and on the points. As soon as they update, everything will work on the new version.

I warn you right away if you have any questions on this topic. I haven't personally tested upgrading to v2, it wasn't necessary.

Setting up a wifi network controller

We pass from theory to practice. The first step is to configure the capsman controller before connecting access points to it. As I said, we update the system before this. We must have the package installed and activated wireless cm2.

To activate the wireless network controller function, go to the section CAPsMAN, click on Manager and check the box Enabled.

Before proceeding with the configuration, I will tell you a little about the principle of the system. The network configures the access point management controller. Separate wifi points are connected to it and receive settings from it. Each connected access point forms a virtual wifi interface on the controller. This allows standard means manage traffic on the controller.

Sets of settings on a controller can be combined into named configurations. This allows you to flexibly manage and assign different configurations to different points. For example, you can create a group with global settings for all access points, but at the same time, additional settings can be set for individual points that will override the global ones.

After the managed point connects to the network master, all local wireless settings on the client are no longer valid. They are replaced by capsman v2 settings.

Let's continue with the controller setup. Let's create a new radio channel and specify its parameters. Go to tab Channels, click on the plus sign and specify the parameters.

There is no drop-down list in the settings and this is inconvenient. You can peep the settings in the current Wifi settings if it is already configured.

We continue the settings on the tab Datapaths. Click the plus sign and set the parameters.

A little delay on the parameter local forwarding. If it is enabled, then the access point itself manages all the traffic of the access point clients. And most of the datapath settings are not used, since the controller does not manage traffic. If this parameter is not set, then all traffic from clients goes to the network controller and is controlled there depending on the settings. If you need traffic between clients, then specify the Client To Client Forwarding parameter.

Let's move on to the security settings. Opening a tab Security cfg. and press the plus sign.

It's time to combine the previously created settings into a single configuration. There may be several such configurations with different settings. One example is enough. Go to tab Configurations and press the plus sign.

On the first Wireless tab, specify the configuration name, ap mode and the SSID name of the future seamless wifi network. On the remaining tabs, simply select the previously created settings.

The main settings of the capsman v2 mikrotik controller are finished. Now we need to create rules for distributing these settings. As I wrote earlier, different points can be given different configurations. The controller can identify access points by the following parameters:

• If certificates are used, then by the Common name field of the certificate.
• In other cases, MAC addresses of points are used in the format XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

Since in my case I do not use certificates, let's create a settings distribution rule based on the MAC address. And since I have a single configuration for all points, then the distribution rule will be the simplest. Let's make it. Go to tab Provisioning and press the plus sign.

Description of Provisioning settings

Radio Mac	access point MAC address
hw. Supported Modes	I didn’t understand what it was for, the documentation is empty
Identity Regexp	there is nothing in the documentation either.
Common Name Regexp	and about it no
IP address ranges	and about this too
Action	selection of action with the radio interface after connection
Master Configuration	selection of the main configuration that will be applied to the created radio interface
Slave Configuration	secondary configuration, you can connect another config to clients
name format	defines the naming syntax for created CAP interfaces
Name Prefix	prefix for names of interfaces created by CAP

This completes the configuration of the capsman v2 controller, you can connect a wifi access point to it.

Connecting access points

My story involves two access points with addresses 192.168.1.1 (Mikrotik) And 192.168.1.3 (CAP-1) connected to each other via an ethernet cable. The first one is a controller, the second is a simple point. Both points see each other in local network. The Wifi interface of the controller, like a regular point, connects to capsman and takes settings from him. That is, the controller is both a controller and an ordinary access point. Even a combination of two points organizes a full-fledged seamless wifi network over the entire area covered by their radio modules.

Connection of CAP access points to the CAPsMAN controller is possible using two different protocols - Layer 2 or Layer 3. In the first case, access points must be physically located in one network segment (physical or virtual, if it is an L2 tunnel). It is not necessary to configure ip addressing in them, they will find the controller by MAC address.

In the second case, the connection will be via IP (UDP). It is necessary to configure IP addressing and organize the availability of access points and the controller by IP addresses.

First, let's connect a separate wifi point. We connect to it through winbox and go to the section Wireless. There we click on CAP and specify the settings.

In my case, I specified a specific controller IP, since ip addressing is configured. If you want to connect points to the controller via l2, then leave the field with the capsman address empty, and in Discovery Interfaces select the interface that is connected to the controller. If they are in the same physical network segment, then the point will automatically find the master.

Save the settings and check. If the access point connects to the controller correctly, then the following picture will appear on the point itself:

And on the controller in the list Interfaces The newly created radio interface of the connected access point will appear:

If your access point stubbornly does not connect to the controller and you can’t figure out what the problem is, then first of all check that you have wireless-cm2 packages activated on all devices. It turned out that after the update, the wireless-fp package was enabled on one of the points, instead of the required one. The access point did not want to connect to the controller in any way, which I just did not try. I also made it a controller, the other did not want to connect to it. I reset all settings, but that didn't help either. When I was completely desperate to solve the problem, I checked the version of the package and found that it was not the right one.

Now let's do the same on the mikrotik controller itself - connect its wifi interface to capsman v2. This is done in exactly the same way as we just did on a separate wifi point. After connecting, we look at the picture on the controller. It should be something like this:

Everything, the basic settings are finished. Now this configuration can be deployed further to new access points and cover a large area with a single seamless wifi network. All connected clients will be displayed on the tab Registration Table indicating the point to which they are connected.

Checking the operation of seamless wifi roaming

Now you can take an Android phone, put a program on it WiFi Analyzer and walk around the territory covered by wifi, test the signal strength, switch from point to point. Switching does not occur immediately, as soon as the signal of the new point is stronger than the previous one. If the difference is not very large, then switching to the new one will not occur. But as soon as the difference starts to be significant, the client jumps. This information can be observed on the controller.

After analyzing the coverage area, you can adjust the power of access points. Sometimes it can be useful to set different power at different points, depending on the layout of the premises. But in general, even in basic setting everything works quite stable and high quality. These Mikrotik models (RB951G-2HnD) can be connected and comfortably operated by 10-15 people. Further, there may be nuances depending on the load. I gave these figures from my examples of real work.

2 networks in capsman on the example of guest wifi

Consider, for example, one common situation that can be implemented using the capsman technology. We have configured a seamless wifi network with password authorization. We need to add another guest network to the same access points for open access. In single mikrotik this is done with Virtual AP. Let's do the same in capsman.

To do this, you need to add a new security setting. Let's go to Security cfg. and create a setting for access without a password. We call it open.

We create another configuration in which we leave all other settings the same, only change the SSID and security settings.

Go to tab Provisioning, open the previously created configuration and add it in the parameter Slave Configuration our second configuration we just made.

We save the changes. Here I waited a few seconds, the new setting did not spread to the points. I did not wait, I went to each point and reconnected it to the controller. Perhaps this was not necessary to do, but it was necessary to wait. I don't know, I did it the way it is. The new setting has spread and a new network of type has appeared in each access point. Virtual AP with an open wifi network.

I checked the work just in case - everything is in order. Connects clients to both networks at the same time and allows you to work.

For an example of how Virtual AP works in capsman, I considered the current situation. Here, guests of the guest network are connected to the same bridge and address space as users of the closed network. For good, you need to make additional settings:

1. Create a separate bridge on the controller for an open network, assign it your own subnet and address in it, add a second wlan interface to this bridge, which will appear after connecting to capsman with two configurations.
2. Set up a separate dhcp server on this subnet with distribution of addresses only from this subnet.
3. In the capsman settings in the datapath, create a separate configuration for the open network. Specify a new bridge in it and do not select the local forwarding parameter.
4. In the open network configuration, select a new datapath.

After that, all connected to an open wifi network will be sent to a separate bridge, where there will be its own dhcp server and an address space that is different from the main network. Do not forget to check the gateway and dns server settings in dhcp that you will transfer to clients.

capsman settings video

Conclusion

Let's summarize the work done. Using the example of two Mikrotik RB951G-2HnD access points, we set up seamless wifi roaming on the area covered by these points. This area is easily expanded with additional wifi points of any Mikrotik model. They do not have to be the same, as is, for example, implemented in some Zyxell configurations that I have configured.

In this example, I considered almost the simplest configuration, but at the same time I painted all the settings and the principle of operation. Based on these data, it is easy to create more complex configurations. There is no fundamental complication here. If you understand how it works, then you can already work further and make your own configurations.

Traffic from access points can be managed in the same way as from regular interfaces. All the basic functionality of the system works - firewall, routing, nat, etc. You can make bridges, share the address space, and much more. But it should be borne in mind that in this case, all traffic will go through the controller. You need to understand this and correctly calculate the performance and throughput of the network.

I remind you that this article is part of a single cycle of articles about.

Useful feedback about the work of capsman

Some useful information from reviews of the article from real users of capsman technology:

Vladimir, good article! A lot of useful letters! :) When setting up capsman at the enterprise, I referred to your article - I learned a lot, but changed it a little. The changes affected the “Channels” tab - removed the Frequency position. I would not recommend using one frequency at all points, because nearby points begin to “choke” and, accordingly, connection breaks occur ... My users complained about a low signal level when they were near an access point (but in fact they were connected to a point with a bad level signal) ... in order for users to "jump" from point to point, which has a better signal, I decided to limit the signal level threshold by making an entry in the AccessList tab. Values ​​entered into SignalRange => -71..120 Interface => all Action => accept, by this he achieved that when the signal reaches below -71, the subscriber “leaves” the point :) The value -71 was not taken by chance (the minimum signal level at a speed of 54Mbit ) Also in the Provisioning tab, I changed the NameFormat value, instead of cap I put identity (when connected to the controller, it shows the name of the point that is registered in the system-> identity of the device), who has an implementation in home devices, he may not need it, but who has points scattered over a large area and there are a lot of them - it will be useful :) In general, thank you very much and sorry for the many letters :)

And one more review:

The article is very good, but I would supplement / redo it in terms of the guest wifi network:
1) divided 2 wifi networks into different radio channels.
2) For security, I would separate the guest network from the main one. Considering that you have a guest network without a password, every student with a smartphone will want to break you. A bridge is created (bridge_open), an ip address from another network (192.168.200.1/24) is assigned to the bridge, a dhcp-pool is created (192.168.200.10-192.168.200.100), a dhcp server rises on the created bridge, we create another Datapaths (Datapaths_open) in which we specify the created bridge (bridge_open), we use Datapaths_open to configure the cfg2 guest network. Next, we configure NAT and firewall so that there is access to the Internet from the guest network (192.168.200.0/24), and it is blocked to the local working network (drop forward from 192.168.200.0/24 to the local network).

Online courses on Mikrotik

If you have a desire to learn how to work with Mikrotik routers and become a specialist in this field, I recommend taking courses on a program based on information from the official course MikroTik Certified Network Associate. In addition to the official program, the courses will include laboratory works where you can test and consolidate the acquired knowledge in practice. All details on the site. The cost of training is very democratic, a good opportunity to gain new knowledge in the subject area that is relevant today. Course features:

• Practice-oriented knowledge;
• Real situations and tasks;
• The best of international programs.

• Like using Mikrotik.
• Simple and fast.
• Setting and on a separate server.
• to reserve a channel on the Internet.

A new version operating system OS 2.13.C0 was released on 09/20/2018. This version adds support for IEEE 802.11k / 802.11r standards in manual configuration mode.

Thanks to the new mechanism "Seamless Wi-Fi Roaming" switching to mobile phone from one access point to another instead of five seconds, is now only 100 ms. With seamless roaming, clients connected via Wi-Fi, when moving from the coverage area of ​​​​one kinetic router to another, will not notice how quickly the switching between devices takes place. Thus, even telephone conversations Voice over Wi-Fi will run without interruption.

How does seamless roaming for Wi-Fi Keenetic work?

As it was before?

In a large room, for example, in a country house or a two-story apartment, two devices are installed. On the first floor, there is an Internet center, the second device on the top floor is connected to the first cable and operates in the "access point" mode. If the user wants to communicate via video communication, for example, in Skype, while moving from the first floor to the second, at some point he will leave the coverage area of ​​​​the first device and, accordingly, disconnect from the WiFi network.

Even if your smartphone of the latest model, knowing the network of the second device, connects to it in just seconds, the skype call will still be interrupted. The same will happen if you download files or send them. In any case, the action will be interrupted due to reconnection to the Wi-Fi network and a short pause in the data exchange.

As it is now?

Keenetic 802.11k/r seamless roaming allows you to avoid completely reconnecting the device in two steps. When using the 802.11k communication standard, the client device does not spend time completely scanning the air and searching for access points, the device knows in advance which networks are preferable. Thanks to the 802.11r communication standard, the authentication time in the new network is greatly reduced. As a result, the process of reconnecting to the network is reduced to one hundred microseconds, which is not at all noticeable to the user.

This seamless connectivity is especially relevant to ensure a stable connection in IP-telephony.

What devices support seamless Wi-Fi?

"Seamless Wi-Fi roaming" is supported by all models of Keenetic routers (dual-band and single-band), all devices for which a new version of the Keenetic OS 2.13 operating system has been released. These include all kinetics of the previous and latest generation, most of those that are on sale.

How to set up Keenetic seamless roaming?

A detailed setup guide can be found in Keenetic database . Here we will focus only on the main points:

Easy to set up Keenetic seamless roaming for the main segment "Home network" can be done using the web interface. To set up the same options for "Gbackbone network» or other arbitrary segments, you must resort to command line;

On dual-band kinetics, both one network and both 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi networks can be enabled with the same settings (name, key, work schedule);

IDs for one segment must be the same across all devices;

The keys and SSID of the mobile domain must be the same.

You can configure the kinetics via the web interface only if it works in the "Basic" or "Access Point" modes. For the “Amplifier” mode, setting is possible only using the command line.

Which clients support seamless Wi-Fi roaming?

Smartphones and tablets must also support seamless Wi-Fi roaming according to IEEE 802.11k/r standards. You can find out exactly whether a particular model supports this standard in the technical documentation from the manufacturer. Note that most modern devices Apple and Samsung support this standard.

Now various wireless devices are gaining popularity, for which high-speed network access is possible only through WiFi. These are Ipad / Iphone, and other mobile gadgets. When you want to organize WiFi access in an area of ​​30 sq. m., then installing a regular Dlink for 1200 rubles will solve all your problems, but if you have an area> 500 sq. m. and this is only one floor, this solution will not work. If you use ordinary access points or routers, then each router will have its own network name (unique SSID) or routers will need to be spaced far away so that coverage areas do not overlap, and this will lead to areas with very poor reception quality, or, in general, absent signal. About six months ago, I ran into the same problem, the solution was found quickly enough - UniFi.

An example of a WiFi UniFi installation in a multi-building car wash.

UniFi Provides Wireless Coverage to California's Arcadia School District (translation).

UniFi Provides Wireless Access to Upscale Hotels in Peru (translation).

Features of UniFi WiFi points:

One network for all WiFi points.

Attractive design.

Easy installation, PoE.

Display coverage area and location of access points on the admin display.

Centralized management of the wireless network.

Guest networks, no LAN access.

Create temporary passwords for guest users.

Automatic software updates on access points.

High scalability: up to 100 or more points.

Multiple wireless networks with differentiation of access rights.

Separation of network user traffic by VLAN.

Fast intranet roaming when switching between access points.

Tracking user traffic, identifying sources of increased network load.

Large coverage area.

Ability to generate one-time temporary passwords (relevant for public places: hotels, cafes, etc.)

Connecting points in repeater mode.

An overview of the capabilities of the UniFi Controller is here.

Implementation of Ubiquity WiFi in Peru hotels here (translation).

Hardware controller for Ubiquiti UniFi. UniFi Cloud Key.

How it looks in practice:

A software controller is installed on one of the network computers, on which all wireless network settings are made.

Through this controller, all settings of the points and network parameters are subsequently made. Below are a couple of screenshots of settings and appearance.

This is a plan of the building showing the locations of the points.

Setting up a guest network without access to corporate resources.

Monitoring of active clients.

Access point monitoring.

View from above.

The installation and configuration process is extremely simple:

1. Place points and connect them to the local network, UniFi supports PoE so that you only need an ethernet socket to connect them.

2. Install the software controller on any network computer, configure the WiFi network parameters, initialize the points, after initialization the settings from the controller will be applied on the point, and the point will be ready for operation. Even when the controller is turned off, the settings on the points are saved.