A wireless roaming method and an access controller

Abstract

The application discloses a wireless roaming method comprising that all access controllers ACs participating in wireless client STA roaming are distributed in different parallel roaming groups; that the ACs in a same roaming group are all equipped with roaming group information containing the name of the roaming group; that each AC notifies the STA accessed to the AC of the roaming group information; that any above AC receives a authentication or re-associate message carrying the roaming group information from the STA when a roaming occurs; that the AC starts an expand authentication protocol EAP authentication flow when determining the STA is in an intergroup roaming according to the configured roaming group information and the received authentication or re-associate message; and that the AC uses a key cache manner if determining the STA is in-group roaming. The application also discloses an access controller AC. The wireless roaming method may achieve fast roaming among any multiple ACs and fast roaming spanning network segments, and may enhance the performance of the AC device.

Description

technical field [0001] The present application relates to roaming technology of wireless local area network, in particular to a wireless roaming method and an access controller. Background technique [0002] Roaming is a key technology of the wireless local area network (WLAN), and an important basis for realizing the mobility of wireless terminals. At present, the mainstream way of WLAN networking is the access controller (AC) + thin AP (FIP AP) networking model. Under this networking condition, how to realize the seamless roaming of wireless clients (STA), especially how to realize Roaming of STAs between different ACs is an important indicator for measuring the performance of wireless devices. [0003] At present, key cache (Key Cache) is mainly used to implement STA roaming among different ACs, such as figure 1 As shown, all ACs that may participate in the roaming of the mobile terminal form a roaming group. The establishment and maintenance of the roaming group are co...

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Problems solved by technology

[0005] Using the above existing technology, only one roaming group can be configured on the AC, and ACs outside the group cannot participate in roaming; and each roaming group can have a maximum of 8 roaming members, that is, roaming between 8 ACs, and more Roaming within an AC; roaming groups must be manually configured, which is cumbersome; when using key caching to achieve fast roaming, all ACs in the roaming group need to synchronize the key information of STAs connected to any member. For example, a roaming group has 6 members, each AC must synchronize the key information of the STAs of the other five ACs. When there are a certain number of online STAs, too many message exchanges and too many key storage entries will affect the performance of the AC device; Unable to achieve fast roaming across network segments

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