WiFi and extended WiFi network

RandLarson · #1 02-24-2006, 02:30 AM

Hello.
I have the Canon WiFi Transmitter. I'm not happy with it - and I'm very unhappy with Canon's lack of support. But that's not my issue. It seems that if I setup an extended WiFi Network (several base stations together sharing the same IP distribution, eg: one Airport Extreme base station and several Airport Express stations to extend the range of signal), it seems that the canon WiFi does not recognize the extended network, it only sees the original base station.

Does anyone know if you can get the Canon WiFi Transmitter to see and extended network, or can the WiPics (sp?) transmitter work in an extended network?

Thanks.

Ian_McCausland · #2 02-24-2006, 09:01 AM

I am sure Thomas will chime here, but in setting mine up it was crucial to have the EXACT same SSID name entered in all the access points. Case sensitive.

ThomasSapiano · #3 02-24-2006, 06:16 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I have the Canon WiFi Transmitter. I'm not happy with it - and I'm very unhappy with Canon's lack of support. But that's not my issue. It seems that if I setup an extended WiFi Network (several base stations together sharing the same IP distribution, eg: one Airport Extreme base station and several Airport Express stations to extend the range of signal), it seems that the canon WiFi does not recognize the extended network, it only sees the original base station.

[/ QUOTE ]

As Ian said, the key is to make sure that the SSID on all of the base stations is set to exactly the same value. If the names are even a little different, 802.11 devices will interpret it as two seperate networks and as such roaming will not function correctly. Note that these values are case sensitive and whitespace characters do count, so it's always a good idea to double check. Once that is in place, the WFT-E1 should be able to roam freely between the various access points.

The ESSID roaming mechanism is an inherent part of the original 802.11 standards so devices such as the WFT-E1 don't really need anything special to support it. Not all access points have the requisite logic to handle passing off clients to other APs on the network, but since Apple's Airport base stations support WDS it'd be unlikely that that would be a problem.

If you've done the above and are still having problems, give us the details of how you've configured your system (primarilly wrt settings dialed into the Airport base stations) and we'll see if we can spot anything in there that might be causing this problem.

RandLarson · #4 03-20-2006, 01:23 AM

Tom, Thanks for your input! As you can see I put this problem to the side for a bit, but I'm going to check it again. I also got advice that I needed to make the network invisible. I'm going to try this again this week in anticipation of a project where I want this to work!

RandLarson · #5 05-21-2006, 04:29 PM

Tom,
I finally got around to trying the extended network again (because I have a need for it tonite!). I was very careful to set the SSID to be exactly the same as well as the network is a closed (hidden) network. The airport admin utility setup the main base station and two remote (express) stations, they are using the correct IP address series, but the transmitter shows zero bars when standing next to one of the remote stations. It is not roaming.

If you see this post, here are my settings:
Airport Extreme Base Station (main) is named Printer Extreme #1
Airport Network is Morningstar Print Network, it is a closed network with 802.11g only, auto channel, security not enabled.
BUT: (I may have found the error) when I look at the WDS settings, it didn't show the base station to act as a WDS base station. Perhaps the error of my ways was I worked on the remote stations to connect to the main station, but didn't go back to the main station and "enable" the WDS?

I went thru the steps to carefully add the remote stations (names are Printer Express #1 and Printer Express #2) to the WDS, I'm letting them restart and trying my test again. The remote stations (express) are at the end of the range for the main base station. I start next to the main station with full signal and 54, as I walk away the signal drops to zero but I'm standing next to the remote station. I take a photo and the transmission drops down to 24, then 11 then 5.5. The images come thru corrupted. The roaming doesn't work.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

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