Considering that most warehouses I've supplied IT services into are full of metal racking, all kinds of goods and badly shielded power lines, I don't think that a wireless mesh would make me super happy if reliability was important and I certainly wouldn't be looking at the sort of... uh, under-specified shall we say... wireless implementations that appear in most SOHO routers if I wanted to implement WDS and count on it working because my users were trying to do stock control with it, not just read their email and dilbert on the move.
I'd look at a more formal wireless "mesh" system with wired access points - you have to run cable of some kind to every place you want a wireless access point because you need to power the SOHO box, so why not run a network cable instead. and use decent wireless access points that support POE?
-- edit to address comment --
I assume by a wireless mesh (and you mention WDS) you're talking about access points that act as both local access points to their area and repeaters to spread to signal to other wireless access points? With only the access points at some of the "edges" connected to the wired network?
When I talk about a mesh system I'm thinking more about systems like the aruba / trapeze (who have apparently been purchased by juniper since I last looked, hmm...) / meru (& other vendors are out there too) system where, yes, you have an ethernet backbone with WAPs connected to it with some kind of centralised management system (most of them use a dedicated "wireless controller" appliance) to handle how the WAPs integrate with each other & any authentication system you implement to provide good coverage and seamlessly hand off client devices to each other as the user walks around.
I've implemented both the aruba and trapeze systems campus wide in education (large indoor sports halls are like warehouses in terms of delivering wired and wireless services, without the racking issue but with the added problem of people hitting the WAPs with balls or whatever in the course of sporting events), and advised / helped people implement them in business areas, including warehouses. These sorts of implementations are obviously more expensive than a bunch of SOHO WAPs, but if "works reliably" is more important than "doesn't cost much" then its money well spent.
I'd suggest you to investigate your wireless misbehaviour at 2 levels:
1. Access points
Activate the syslog function on all your AP toward a dedicated syslog server within your network.
Beware, the access to this function was suppressed with the version 6 of
AirPort Utility: AirPort Utility 6.0 missing a number of features
2. Environnment
Install iSTumbler or any equivalent level tool on a portable and secured Mac to make a serious environnment survey at 2 levels.
- A first one when you don't see any misbehaviour and which you'll keep as a reference of your basic environnement. This survey will have to cover all your office and most notably all your wireless coverage. Keep in mind that this wireless coverage is a huge 3 dimensionnal potatoe. Don't hesitate to
investigate the border where interferences may be a nightmare and not detected from the central point of vue of the AP.
- A second one when you encounter a misbehavioiur of your network.
Once you will be equiped with these 2 tools, familiarize yourself with them.
Within a few hours you will be able to unravel radio interferences problems,
802.11n misbehaviour, AP misbehaviour, DHCP problem, ARP problem, IP problem, 802.11n attack, ARP attack, IP attack…
Best Answer
I have not used Aruba gear for networking in actual enterprise applications (only dabbled on GNS3 and other virtualization platforms), but you might be able to do it with your Aruba WLC or AP's. That is assuming you are using Aruba APs.
I use a Cisco WLC in my current environment and it is able to detect mobile devices and then you should be able to segregate them from there. Again, this is on Cisco and not Aruba but I would venture a guess and say that Aruba has the same functionality.
I found this guide which appears to provide some insight on what you are looking for.
From the guide -
You can move all smartphone/mobile devices based on fingerprinting.
DHCP fingerprinting allows you to identify the OS of the device and then a role can be assigned to the device based on the OS.
Hope this helps.