Looking to upgrade my wireless in my house which I have Cat5 cabling distributed throughout

[G+_Brian Griffin]

Looking to upgrade my wireless in my house which I have Cat5 cabling distributed throughout. I am looking for suggestions on the best wap that I can install 2 of without having any handoff or interference issues. Any suggestions are appreciated!

[G+_Ben Reese]

Depends on how big your house is. I've got 1 Trendnet AP in a centrally located closet and it covers the whole place very well with 2.4GHz for pretty cheap (I think it was ~$40). I'd definitely recommend POE (Power Over Ethernet) and many POE APs come with the power injector. How's 2.4GHz I your area? If it's congested you might consider a dual-band to have 5GHz too.

 

If you have the budget for it, Ubiquiti makes some very nice options. We put 2 in our church (an old school building) and they cover very well.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Oh yeah... And for smooth hands-off, give them the same SSID and different channels if you can. I think as a technology, wifi doesn't handle the transitions very well, but some APs promise to make it better.

[G+_Taylor Graham]

if you want a smooth hand off, you'll need 2 AP's on a controller, usually something pro-grade. I set it up once with cisco aironets assuming it would work, but devices still didnt switch ap's until they had completely lost connection. I'd love to know a cheaper way to do it too.

[G+_Ben Reese]

I remember researching GSM vs EVDO-A about a decade ago. GSM uses Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) while EVDO uses Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). Because CDMA encoded everything into a digital packet with a single key, a phone could talk to multiple towers at the same time allowing seamless transitions. TDM required a handshake between the phone and the tower to determine the time slot that the phone could talk in allowing the phone to communicate with only one tower at a time. This meant in theory a CDMA/EVDO carrier (like Sprint and Verizon) could have fewer dropped calls than TDM/GSM carriers (like T-Mobile and AT&T).

 

All that said, the transition done by wifi feels more like that of GSM where one connection has to be broken before the other can be made. I suspect some equipment brands could make this smoother by allowing the APs to talk to each other (or a controller as Taylor mentioned). The Ubiquiti APs I installed claimed to have seamless to roaming, but I haven't really tested that yet (between the 2 access points is the wireless router).

[G+_Akira Yamanita]

Good handoff is really client device dependent. However, there are newer protocols that assist with handoff decisions to avoid situations where the client is too passive (drops a connection before picking up a new AP) or too aggressive (constantly reassociating with a new AP). The support for the newer protocols is again, device dependent. These protocols require APs with a controller. The best bet for your case if you need two or more APs for good coverage is the Ubiqity Unifi line. They're relatively inexpensive for enterprise suitable APs and they even have a Zero Handoff feature, although it's at the expense of some performance. One of the requirements is that the APs operate on the same channel. It's not a feature suited for dense deployment, but for two or three in a home, it would be fine and if you have devices that are terrible at roaming, this would be a possible solution.

[G+_Matthew Bowen]

http://www.open-mesh.com

Enjoy! ;)

[G+_Sean Caldwell]

Matthew, use open mesh for years at a few schools and love it! It also had the handoff issues when walking around campus trying to stream media if I remember correctly.

[G+_Matthew Bowen]

Sean Caldwell They have been very good about upgrades - both hardware and software. Thanks for the tip, though. I'll make sure to test that specifically during rollout. I want my clients happy!

[G+_martin rednal]

Just go with ubiquiti. They have auto handoff without controller once setup, good price too. I always use at my customer sites when needing more than one ap. See https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap/ and new in wall https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap-wall/