How to extend the coverage of wireless home network with WDS
The Wireless Distribution System (WDS) is a special operating mode that allows multiple Wi-Fi access points to communicate with each other wirelessly. Not all access points and wireless routers support this option, but may be particularly useful to extend the coverage of a wireless home network.
Important: WDS is not ratified by the IEEE standard and is therefore it’s not guaranteed a perfect compatibility between devices supporting this technology, so our advice is to use the same equipment manufacturer if you want to install a distributed network. Moreover, in most cases the devices configured in WDS mode not handle WPA encryption but only the old WEP.
A WDS can consist of two or more access points. All elements of access network must be configured in WDS mode; the main access point (the one that provides broadband Internet access and from which terminals are connected, even wired) is vhosts wireless router, while other devices that use the distributed system to extend the range are called wireless client router.
To recognize each other the devices exploit the MAC addresses of network on each machine ,then you have to indicate the addresses of other access points that make the wireless network.
For repeater network, even an access point operating in WDS mode has to use its radio channel, in part to communicate to other access points and partly to provide connectivity to network clients.
The result is a substantial decrease in performance over the use of a single access point, once again increasing extension of the network is at the expense of network throughput. Remember that all access points of the distributed system must operate on the same wireless channel while it is recommended that you set each device login with a different SSID, since it is not always consumer platforms provide mechanisms for efficient dynamic roaming.
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