Hi everybody,

I am looking for a way to set up a wireless network (WPA protected) in a location where an area needs to be covered by two access points, conncted via cabled ethernet. When roaming between the two access-points, the ESS should take care about maintenance of potentially existing TCP-Sessions, and so on, over the cabled infrastructure, and not the wireless medium.
Cisco implemented a proprietary feature called WCCP in their Access-Points that takes care about that. As far as I can tell, TCP-Sessions are not torn down when roaming between two access-points communicating via wccp.

All I found here so far is this link:
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=10912

But it doesn't fully answer the question I have.
Of course the WPA Drivers might notice a better signal from the same SSID and would attempt to connect to the access-point that it receives a better signal from.

But imagine the situation:

Client -connected to-> Access-Point A
- Now the client moves out of range from Access Point A and sees Access-Point B with a better signal
Client -connecting to-> Access-Point B

existing TCP-connections would have to be torn down in that case, because Access-Point B has no means of knowing the WPA session-keys negotiated between the client and Access-Point B.

There would need to be some sort of server knowing each state from all clients associated to the wireless network.

Is there a feature within openwrt that I could use for this?

Thanks in advance and br,

Matt

I would also like to know if there is a way to do this without using Cisco. I only need 3 access points and Cisco wants $600 per 802.11G point and $2000 for a wlan controller capable of handling up to 6 access points. Bit to rich for this project. With my research I have not come across any current open standards that supports seem-less hand-off. I came across 802.11f which seemed to be the same thing as cisco's way, but it was withdrawn as a standard. Everyone always is talking about the client deciding but that WILL result in tcp connection tear-down. Cisco's way is seem-less. Motorola and Meru also have proprietary solutions that implement this technology. Although I have only delt with Cisco.

With the voip boom, i'd be surprised if there isn't an open way to do this.

What gives you guys the impression that the access point has anything to do with TCP sessions? And what in the world would WCCP have to do with wireless networks?

Handoff between access points can be problematic if the client has to pick "the best" access point by itself. This where the proprietary protocols come in. But if you're talking about a residential setting with only a handful of devices, it usually isn't an issue.