I have a relatively large area in the house that needs to be covered by WiFi. The range of a single access point will most probably not be sufficient as it is built from massive concrete with steel enforcements. Thus, I installed multiple access points all over the place to get sufficient coverage.
I tried to sketch the logical/topological structure of the network in question here:
Obviously, the pure cable-based connections are no problem. All the access points are using the same SSID to allow for fast switching without change of IP or the like.
This has however the effect that when the access points are close enough (depending on the local possibilities for setup), they can receive their partners’ packets.
As a result, these wireless connections can be seen as additional connections (from the perspective of the network topology) that can cause loops in the topology. Loops in an Ethernet network is not the best idea, as far as I understand. Here STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) comes into play. According to this answer STP is a hassle and should be avoided when possible in small installations.
Now I have a few questions:
- Are normal switches/access points (customer devices) able to cope with such a situation?
- Is it necessary to handle this situation in a dedicated way?
- From time to time, I have huge problems with the WiFi network. Within the network, I get latencies (measured with ping) of up to 5000ms. This is not always the case (sporadic behavior). Could this be caused by such a weak, unstable connection?
