[Shop-talk] Wifi access point?

[David Hillman]

On Tue, 16 Jun 2015, Doug Braun wrote:
> Don't places like large offices, schools, and airports have dozens or
> hundreds of access points with the same SSID?

    Yes, but that's a different use case.  It's clearly unreasonable to 
expect people to enter dozens of SSIDs and passwords into their device. 
Also, there's probably someone collecting performance metrics on those 
WAPs, who will know if and when there's a problem with one.  And they 
probably have enough overlapping coverage that one failed WAP wouldn't be 
noticable anyway.

    None of that applies to a home installation with two WAPs.  YMMV.

    The 802.11 header includes the MAC address of the WAP.  In other words, 
packets are addressed to a specific WAP, not to the network or by the 
SSID.  If a given device has excessive hysteresis and refuses to switch 
between two networks when the relative signal quality changes, it probably 
won't switch between 2 WAPs on the same network either.  And you'll be 
unable to force it to do so manually.

--
  David Hillman