Question

Hello,

I own about 15 RUT950 routers that each has a SIM card. I would like to place them all around our building with the same SSID so that people can connect to it and connect automatically to the nearest one.

Using ethernet wire to connect them together is not possible.

The problems I have right now is that the routers are giving the same IP to different devices since there is no communication between the router's DHCP.

Is there a way to use a DHCP through internet ?
Each router will be on the RMS, maybe there is settings there that I could use to do what I want ?

Thank you for your time,

Answer 1

You are asking for "roaming". You need to setup the APs  (955's in your case) with identical SSIDs, but on different, alternating wifi channels (1,6,11). Make shure, that a client is not within reach of 2 APs running on same channel. How flawless handover from one AP to another works, most of all depends upon client. The problem here is, that some (old) Androids only switch to a "louder" AP, when connection to actual AP drops to (almost) zero. This behaviour can be improved with recent wifi software in the routers, but only availabe in official openwrt for RUT955, not in Teltonikas old stuff.

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Comments

Thank you for your reply.

This is indeed the route we chose. Our first test weren't working because we had the channel on auto. Now that we have separated each channel per router it is working as intended.

It's a shame we didn't know about the openwrt option for the 955, we would have gotten those one if we knew.

We might play with the signal power option for the wifi to prevent too much overlap.

Answer 2

Hello,

For this use case you will need to use Wireless mesh functionality. Basically, it requires a single router, which acts as a DHCP server and has access to the internet, and a certain number of routers to provide internet connectivity in different places, which would also communicate with the gateway router. In this setup, there should not be any IP conflicts and all clients should be able to connect to the same SSID and have access to the internet moving between access points. 

A configuration example of how to set a wireless mesh network is provided in the following link: https://wiki.teltonika-networks.com/view/Wireless_Mesh_configuration_example

Best regards,

Žygimantas 

Comments

Thank you for your reply.

In a mesh network, only the router that is used as a gateway would have use the data plan of the SIM card right ?
The problem with this solution is that the bandwidth of only 1 SIM card would not be enough. We had planned to have at least 3-4 user connected on each router, if everything funnel back to a single router that would mean around 50 users would go through a single 4G connexion.

I'm guessing having them in mesh configuration but with each their own gateway is not possible ?