Dual wireless access points and connection from f14?

[mike cloaked]

I have a question for any wireless expert who can help.

At home I have two wireless access points - one upstairs and one
downstairs - to give a good signal anywhere in the house.

What I would like is to have a seamless wireless access from any
laptop whether mine or a visitor with the appropriate encryption
password.

Now my thinking is that using the *same* ssid and encryption protocol
and password for both APs should do the trick nicely - so that is how
I have things set up (with different channel for each AP's output) and
indeed if I power up a laptop running F14 upstairs it connects nicely
with a lovely strong signal - but if I then go downstairs and boot the
same machine then it tries to connect to the upstairs AP despite the
nearest signal about 10 feet away being a great deal stronger!   So
the system tries to connect to the last AP it connected to even if a
local signal is stronger - this is illogical behaviour and it is not
clear if NetworkManager or wpa_supplicant is the culprit - or if I am
not supposed to expect things to work that way!

I had a visitor who had a laptop here this weekend - and the same
problem arose - I decided to try to set up two connections in
NetworkManager both with the same ssid and encryption/password but tag
them with the MAC address of each AP - the box steadfastly refused to
reconnect to the nearest (and strongest) AP after having been
connected to the weak one first, and I had to remove the definition
for the weak signal altogether in NM's list of connections, and only
leave the connection tagged with the MAC address of the nearest strong
signal before restarting the NetworkManager service before I could
persuade NM to connect to the near and strong AP!

I don't know if the design of NetworkManager ever considered this
scenario and whether any developer ever put in place code to hook up
to a valid strong signal even if a previously valid signal (which is
currently weaker) still exists - but it seems to me that the decision
logic in NetworkManager is both perverse and flawed?

Anyone help with some knowledge here?

Thanks

-- 
mike c