Nightmare-ish wireless situation

I'm having a wireless problem with one of the sites I have to support. Before anyone scolds me about a site survey ;-)
We sort of inherited this setup from the customer when we took over their network and it never really has worked correctly. I'm trying to avoid telling them to hardwire their PCs.
The site is a Manufacturing facility with a corrugated metal roof, 25 ft cielings and large power transformers. There are two access-points that serve the manufacturing floor, one on either side of the building mounted about 10ft off the ground on poles. There's another access-point that serves the lobby and conference room, for a grand total of 3 APs. All three APs are Model: AIR-AP1231G-A-K9 with (I believe, I havent actually been to the site) stock antennas. The APs are all connected to the same switch with the same VLANs (One for Guests [internet only] and one for internal clients).
As for security, the clients authenticate via Certificates that are verified with the Radius Server / Active Directory.
The issue is that clients tend to not stay associated with their AP, they roam from AP to AP. Is there any way to keep clients (Intel Wireless cards for the most part) from roaming to another AP? Is there somthing I can configure on the APs to make them stick? We've tried adjusting power on the APs as well as different antennas (Directional vs omni).
Here's a sample of what we get from the logs:
Aug 24 14:41:54.608: %DOT11-6-ASSOC: Interface Dot11Radio0, Station 0018.391a.abe4 Associated KEY_MGMT[NONE]
Aug 24 14:44:48.438: %DOT11-6-ASSOC: Interface Dot11Radio0, Station 0004.2399.b809 Associated KEY_MGMT[NONE]
Aug 24 15:07:07.773: %DOT11-6-ROAMED: Station 000f.3da9.fa87 Roamed to 0012.0019.9700
Aug 24 15:07:07.773: %DOT11-6-DISASSOC: Interface Dot11Radio0, Deauthenticating Station 000f.3da9.fa87
Aug 24 15:08:08.767: %DOT11-4-MAXRETRIES: Packet to client 0018.391a.abe4 reached max retries, removing the client
Aug 24 15:08:08.767: %DOT11-6-DISASSOC: Interface Dot11Radio0, Deauthenticating Station 0018.391a.abe4 Reason: Previous authentication no longer valid
Aug 24 15:08:12.934: %DOT11-6-ASSOC: Interface Dot11Radio0, Station 0018.391a.abe4 Associated KEY_MGMT[NONE]
To me it looks like interference issues because I'm seeing quite a few output errors on the radios. Any Ideas how I can fix this problem? Thanks!

I just dealt with this same problem and environment with a customer last week. The max retries tells me that it's interference, most likely multipath.
I would lower your fragmentation and RTS thresholds to as low as you can go. I've heard you can go as low as 300, but I did 1024 just to be safe. Also, if you can, turn the power down on those AP's as far as you can while maintaining coverage levels. A good hot signal isn't always best in these environements.
The clients are sensing a lot of interference and then jumping to the next AP even though it may have a lower signal. It's signal quality and SNR ratio's that it's really looking for.
Try those things out. I did last week and so far we've been doing much better.

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    OK, so I'm sorry this was so wordy...I'm just trying to cover all my bases and get all the information across.
    So what seems the best solution for my needs? One of the Apple products? A combination of Apple products? A combo of Apple and other products? In summation, here's what I want to do: play music from laptop to desktop speakers from another drive, and have the/a network hard drive to access/work over (in well-utilized wireless-N speed, and gigagbit). Being able to plug directly into laptop would be added bonus.
    As the subject mentions: "Please advise!"
    PS - trying to stay as cost-effective as possible, without skimping on being "wise".
    Message was edited by: johnb4467
    Message was edited by: johnb4467
    Message was edited by: johnb4467

    Hi again,
    So I've read a good majority of the Time Capsule articles you recommended, and there's a few major issues that I'm seeing, that maybe you (or anyone else reading!!) can continue to advise me on:
    My biggest concern at this point, is that even if I set up a 'shared' itunes library on either the Extreme or TC, it doesn't sound like I can SYNC the library to my iphone...this is kind of one of the big things I'm looking to do. Is this a no-work-around situation? To sync, does the library downright have to be on the computer? Right now my entire Itunes library is on my old PC, and since it doesn't have a monitor anymore, I can't get onto it to sync -- but beyond this, I wanted everything synced with my Mac (addresses, calendars, etc...and music) -- which unfortunately just doesn't have the space for the music (along with the plethora of apps!). I also want to be in a situation where I can sit on my sofa, use the laptop, select a song in Itunes (on a NAS), and have it play on my stereo speakers. The only way I see this happening is: purchasing a TC, Extreme Station, or NAS like a "Mybook", and pipe it through an Airport Express. Kind of a long, expensive workaround, but does this sound like the solution? Of course, this still doesn't address my problem of syncing to my iphone...I'm sure I'm not the only one out there with this problem (virtually any MB user is going to run into this issue, I would think)...please chime in if you feel you have a good solution.
    Thank you for the continued help, everyone!
    John
    PS - If CHOOSING between a 500gb TC and a 1TB, I've read the 500GB drive is actually more of a "server-grade" disk...is this true?
    And as of this point in time, you can still do a Time Machine backup via Airport Extreme to an attached USB hdd, yes?
    Seconldy, it is a little discouraging that neither the TC, Airport Extreme, or USB atached drive (to either) EVER spin down. Honestly, a hiccup in the drives spinning up doesn't at all bother me...I'd rather have my drives "live" longer! I do, however, love that the TC runs [according to the review] virtually silent -- and only lukewarm (akin to AppleTV, which I assume isn't too hot) -- and only uses 30w of power (quite important to me...I hate wasting unneeded electricity!).

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