Two wireless routers w/ same SSID?

[newtekie1]

It this possible?

I've got a client that runs a coffee shop. He has problems with his single Linksys WRT54GL on a Comcast Cable connection getting overrun by too much traffic and crashing. Both the router and cable modem crash multiple times thoughout the day, and have to be power cycled. So he is having AT&T come out and put in a DSL connection as a secondary connection, and buying another WRT54GL router.

He wants the second router to have the same SSID as the first, they don't use encryption, so that people are equally likely to connect to either router. The two routers will be placed on opposite sides of the coffee shop, and we are hoping that which the user connects to is based on signal strength.

I'm worried about the two conflicting, but I'm not sure. Both routers will be running Tomato firmware. I'll probably give each a seperate IP range to keep IP conflicts out of the equation, but will the traffic to the same SSID names get confused?

Has anyone tried this?

[Munki]

Yes, its possible. We do it here at my work. All thats going to happen is when you get out of range of one, the other will take its place without loosing connection. I work in a school system, so we have serveral running on each hall to make full hallway WiFi.

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

can set one as a repeater

[newtekie1]

Originally Posted by Munki

Yes, its possible. We do it here at my work. All thats going to happen is when you get out of range of one, the other will take its place without loosing connection. I work in a school system, so we have serveral running on each hall to make full hallway WiFi.

I'm just worried that the two will conflict being so close to eachother, there will be a huge overlap of signal.

I guess the default gateway takes care of this issue though and makes sure all the traffic goes to the right router since the two routers will have different IPs.

I guess I'll find out for sure in a few days when I go set everything up.

Originally Posted by [I.R.A]_FBi

can set one as a repeater

I don't need a repeater, the single router covers the entire coffee shop easily. The problem is that the number of users/connections overleads the single Internet connection/router. So we are trying to divide it up over two internet connections/routers, but make it invisible to the users in the coffee shop.

We were originally going to give the second router/Internet connnection a different SSID. However, we are worried that everyone will just keep connecting to the original SSID, and not use the second one. Especially since the second one will be slower since the DSL speed is slower than the cable(6Mb vs. 10Mb). We figure if people start to notice the second one being slower, they won't use it, especially since when the coffee shop closes at night there are still over 60 people connected to the wireless that stay connected 24/7(neighbors in the apartments around the shop I'm sure), I'm sure they will eventually notice the second SSID being slower. This is why we want both to have the same SSID, so the users don't have a choice which connection they use.

[mrhuggles]

you could do this and drop the TX power very low

[Munki]

I wouldnt worry about it.Thinking on it, once a computer grabs a route its not going to change unless the wireless is disconnected then reconnected. What we have is the wireless on its own VLAN, and have each wireless AP its own static IP.


example:


WIRELESS (10.10.200.1 - 10.10.200.255)


AP one -10.10.200.1

AP two - 10.10.200.2


Hosts -10.10.200.10 - 10.10.200.255

God forbid you have more hosts than that. have your registers ( or whatever) on a LAN connection with there own VLAN.

[lemonadesoda]

I really dont think this is the best option. But it might be the cheapest.

It would be better to have a pro router and one (or more) WAPs, rather than trying to get a consumer wireless-router-all-in-one to do a man's job.

The SECOND internet line will soon add up in cost. Much better to have ONE fast line, and better equipment.

PS. What is "too much traffic"? How many people connect in one day (on average), and how many users are on-line at the same time? You might be able to solve this by just shortening the lease time on the DHCP... perhaps you are running out of DHCP addresses?

[Munki]

haha, Lemon, I was thinking Acess points this whole time, not noticing he has consumer Wireless routers. lol, whoops. yeah, dont get more than one connection, its a coffee shop. lol

[newtekie1]

Originally Posted by lemonadesoda

I really dont think this is the best option. But it might be the cheapest.

It would be better to have a pro router and one (or more) WAPs, rather than trying to get a consumer wireless-router-all-in-one to do a man's job.

The SECOND internet line will soon add up in cost. Much better to have ONE fast line, and better equipment.

PS. What is "too much traffic"? How many people connect in one day (on average), and how many users are on-line at the same time? You might be able to solve this by just shortening the lease time on the DHCP... perhaps you are running out of DHCP addresses?

Trust me, I would love to have a proper setup, with a Cisco box in there handling all the work and a few access points. However, cost is definitely the major issue here. I had a hard enough time convincing them to buy WRT54GL's so I could at least put Tomato on them.

The second internet line was going to happen regardless, so the extra cost isn't a consideration. The Comcast connection has proven unstable in the past, so they wanted two connections coming into the building either way.

Their current router, a standard WRT54G v7(the crap ones), was simply getting overload with too many connections and crashing. There are typically 60-70 people connected to the wireless when the coffee shop is closed and empty. A by-product of being located 2 blocks from a university in the heart of a block of appartment buildings filled with nothing but students. During a typical day there will be about 100-150+ people connected to the router at any given time, when the place is full during the rushes that number can get near 200. The DHCP address issue was something I corrected right away, the first time I was on site, it was set to 100 leases, with a lease time of 30 minutes. I changed that to 250 leases with a lease time of 1 minute. That did eliminate one issue, but the router still crashes about 4 times a day from being overloaded(students like to download a lot of crap...).

I initially suggested only replacing the single router with the beefier WRT54GL running Tomato, but they insisted on two since they were getting the second internet connection anyway. Well actually, I suggested going with a professional Cisco router/firewall combo, but they didn't want to spend the money...

I'm hoping that running Tomato will help, as I can enable QoS and limit the bandwidth on ports 1024+ to next to nothing. This setup is probably the closest thing I'm going to get to a professional solution in this situation.

Originally Posted by Munki

haha, Lemon, I was thinking Acess points this whole time, not noticing he has consumer Wireless routers. lol, whoops. yeah, dont get more than one connection, its a coffee shop. lol

It's a very busy coffee shop, surrounded by student housing...damn moochers...

[mrhuggles]

WDS + load balancing? in the OP's case just WDS would probably be pretty cool.

[lemonadesoda]

I dont get it. Is this a pay-per-minute hotspot or something? You REALLY CANT manage 100+ users with any sort of shaping, port management or QoS with just a consumer router. Tomato or no tomato.

Two separate routers with differnt IP, gateways, DNS, running same SSID will be a nightmare.

[lemonadesoda]

from dd-wrt themselves: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=58690

no, no to a consumer unit (WRT54GL) doing over 20 users (reliably).

[newtekie1]

Originally Posted by lemonadesoda

I dont get it. Is this a pay-per-minute hotspot or something? You REALLY CANT manage 100+ users with any sort of shaping, port management or QoS with just a consumer router. Tomato or no tomato.

Two separate routers with differnt IP, gateways, DNS, running same SSID will be a nightmare.

Sure you can, the single router is up and running managing ~200 wireless users. Hasn't has a crash since I installed it last Tuesday. Just waiting on the second router to be ordered and come in to test with the same SSID, if it doesn't work, we'll use two SSIDs.

[lemonadesoda]

Pretty amazing if you have been able to stop the frequent crashes. Perhaps share your setup/results in the dd-wrt thread i linked to... your advice might help others that are hitting the wall at around 20 users.

[Hybrid_theory]

If you're just worried about overlap have one using the 1 channel and the other using 11 channel. These frequency ranges do not overlap at all.

When you get tomato should be able to lower you're broadcast range to keep out them pesky univ students.