Mutiple SSID on ePMP Access Points

[Jony_Pedro_dos_Santo (Jony Pedro dos Santos)]

Hi team
Is it possible to configue more than one SSID on ePMP AP devices??

[Douglas_Generous]

At this time the answer is no.

Why do you want different SSIDs?

[brubble1]

Been a few times over the years I wished they could do this but no, not an option.

[Douglas_Generous]

As a epmp AP I just can not see a reason to have multiple SSIDs. Especially when the SM is VLAN aware, maybe someone could enlighten me as to why you would want this? If its to allow competitors to use your network, then eap-ttls is the way to go. That way you will be able to control/bill for each third party SM.

If you are thinking about wifi mode, then you can use the hotspot firmware on a connectorized SM, it has multiple SSIDs for wifi.

[Jony_Pedro_dos_Santo (Jony Pedro dos Santos)]

For separated two networks using the same backbone AP. I didnt want to have several password on SW for different AP zone, so If could have a second SSID with one Password on all APs, the SM radios of this network would be set to unique SSID and no matter in with zone is located. Just scan the best signal and associate to it.

[brubble1]

Also this scenario:
(1) You can only put 1 AP in CPE preferred list because otherwise there are always CPE’s connected to a less than ideal AP / not on the AP they should normally be on (sometimes they all just dogpile on one AP).
(2) You have an AP go down for whatever reason (like a 3000L that lost sync…)
(3) You add the SSID of the down AP to the sectors on each side of the downed AP and while it’s less than ideal you pick up many of the customers from the downed AP and keep them happy until you can replace/fix the down AP.

Otherwise the only way to accomplish this is log into each CPE on the working APs, add the SSID of the down AP (because you are going to change the SSID of the working APs to the SSID of the broken AP) which interrupts their service . Then you change the SSID of the working AP to that of the broken AP (interrupting their service a 2nd time) and you pick up the original CPE’s and many of the CPE’s from the down AP.

Now when you get the down AP going again you change the SSID of the working AP’s back to their original SSID which means a reboot which means now not only do the CPE’s from the down AP move to the new/fixed AP but so do many of the CPEs you added the down APs SSID to… So now everyone that can is piled on the newly fixed AP and you have to track down everyone with two working SSIDs in their preferred list and remove the SSID of the previously down AP from their list / reboot their radios/interrupt their service yet again to force them back to their original AP.

Now you could have gone through the CPE’s from the working AP and removed the down AP before changing the SSID of the AP back but now those customers are down the entire time it takes you do this to all the other CPE’s … so much less downtime the other way.

Also been a few times we have split AP’s or even reduced AP’s and it would have been useful to only have to add an SSID to the AP instead of having to add it to each and every CPE being affected and then go back to all those same CPE’s afterwards and change it back instead of just removing the SSID from the appropriate AP.

For us it really doesn’t happen that often so it’s not a big deal and it wouldn’t even be needed most of the time if CPE’s would return to their top preferred AP instead of just staying on the 2nd, 3rd, 15th AP on the list until something happens to force them off.

[Douglas_Generous]

Some of this does make sense and some just does not to me, maybe I’ve just been doing this too long to see “the light”?

Separating networks on one AP is just a VLAN issue, not an SSID issue. Multiple SSIDs on an AP would just cause the same havoc you have with wifi APs with multiple SSIDs (yes I am looking at DLink and Asus as examples), but once you get to enterprise wifi APs then you are really configuring multiple distinct APs in one box that just happen to share some hardware.
You also have EAP-TTLS and RADIUS which handle most of the heavy lifting for you, so to me this is just a misuse of concepts since your new SSID will be either on the same or different VLAN anyway, just configure using same SSID and use VLAN for what it does best, keeping things separate.

For splitting sectors, we just put one up beside/below the exiting but turn that antenna to the final point direction, then have all the sector SMs scan for new APs (Wish this wouldn’t knock them off-line though) and we migrate the affected SMs to the new AP using the preferred AP list. You can keep several APs in the list for SM roaming/ loss of AP and the SM will simply migrate to another AP on the list.

I do fully agree that the SMs should monitor the Preferred AP list for better APs by both signal and priority, and then move back to a more preferred AP when available. This would reduce customer complaints of slow internet which most veteran clients simply power cycle the radio and all is good when it reconnects. To me this would be a very important feature that would be a selling point to those whom are looking for their next set of network hardware.

[bkizildere]

waiting for that over 2 years!

[ninedd]

Actually, waiting for over 6 years at least. It’s been LONG discussed, and long “Under Consideration”

Here’s one of the relatively recent discussion threads

Feature Request - ePMP3000 Automatically connect back to Preferred APs

Hi Team, Would it be possible for ePMP SUs to periodically re-scan from their preferred AP list and reselect based on AP list order? Reason for this request is that if their preferred AP loses connectivity (e.g. goes offline, GPS sync, interference, whatever) and they connect to secondary AP, we then have to manually force them back to their preferred AP. Thanks

And here’s one of the the ‘Your Ideas / Suggestions’ threads.

ePMP preferred AP retry timer

Subject says it all... just like the PMP series, it would be nice to have ePMP SM's that are associated to a secondary/non-preferred AP to try to reconnect to their preferred AP after a predefined amount of time. 

[squirrely]

Well yes, I can imagine the scenario you want to use second SSID for. We did that with MikroTik APs in the days they were worth something. For example you have failed AP or want to temporarily bring down the AP for maintenance or replacement, and you’d be ok with weaker signals of neighbor AP clients for a short time - you just set up a second SSID on neighboring sector and allow clients of serviced AP to associate to it. For Cambium I’ve found couple of workarounds: 1) you can have all your SMs configured to have a second AP in preferred AP list that is normally never online. You then just change the SSID of this “helper AP” to match that second preferred AP and allow clients that lost their primary AP to associate with it. When you get things done, just change it back and SMs will associate with their primary APs in their lists, because “helper AP SSID” is no longer available. 2) you can use cnMaestro and push configs to the SMs with one or more preferred APs on some specific sector/AP only. We started with this option when one of our APs seized to work at -30’C and no one wanted to climb 50 meters up to replace it in the freezing wind Temporary setup and cnMaestro sector-wide config became permanent solution described in option one detailed above…

Just use your imagination to create functionality out of what you have
As for network-segmentation, as others pointed out, this is now probably achievable only via VLANs… But of course having second SSID bridged to different VLAN would also be one and more obvious way of doing it.

[brubble1]

@squirrely

1. you can have all your SMs configured to have a second AP in preferred AP list that is normally never online. You then just change the SSID of this “helper AP” to match that second preferred AP and allow clients that lost their primary AP to associate with it.

I’ve thought about doing that but never took the time to really think it out. But since you brought it up and had it all thought out already, I think I’ll just add “dogpile1”, “dogpile2” and “dogpile3” to the preferred list of all the CPEs then I have 3 universally usable SSIDs to work with.

Genius ! Thanks !