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Forum Discussion
WAX214 dropping clients in a roaming environment
So I have 5 WAX214's configured with the same SSID with roaming enabled (only usable with WPA2); they have static IP's assigned to them (on a pfsense firewall appliance), some have been connected to a couple TP Link POE switches with L3 capability (but not configured); but after a few days some clients are not staying connected to certain access points on the same SSID. I have read these AP's are supposed to be "standalone" products only. Can anyone share their experience with setting up multiple WAX214's? I suspect my DHCP reservations might be filling up too fast, but I only see about 67 clients connected at any given moment across the entire network. Would it be wise to just segment each AP and create separate SSID's for each? I'm tempted to turn roaming off and up the encryption to WPA3/2.
2 Replies
hytech wrote:
I suspect my DHCP reservations might be filling up too fast, but I only see about 67 clients connected at any given moment across the entire network.
Why that? Each client has one hardware MAC (resp. for the sake of it a random MAC) which is supposed to be always the same for connecting to the same SSID, at least as long as the SSID config on the client isn't removed and redone. So with one SSID, the client does get always use the same (hardware or random) MAC - and this is what the DHCP server does make use.
hytech wrote:
Would it be wise to just segment each AP and create separate SSID's for each? I'm tempted to turn roaming off and up the encryption to WPA3/2.
Can't find much wise things behind this idea - makes it very difficult for the mobile devices. Worse, most clients will stick on the SSID even down to low signal levels, stick on the same band (2.4, 5, or 6 GHz), and so on. Further more, if the users decide to configure random MAC (the default on most OS), the complexity for the DHCP server and the management does go up massively. And I've not talked about the network security management.
Can't tell you more ref. the romaing on the WAX21x, as we have just WAC5xx and WAX6xx in the field.
I have a similair setup with pfsense and three WAX214's -- check the log file for "IEEE 802.11: disassociated" -- if so check if my solution works :
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