Spectrum load balancer or band steering [ Edited ]

[NightShade1]

I was wondering in which situalions you guys use pick spectrum load balancer over the band steering or pick band steering over  spectrum load balancer.

As far im reading Aruba recomends to have just ONE on, but not BOTH at the same time as best practice.

[ngutri]

I thought they are two different things.  Band steering to prefer-5 GHz is configured in virtual-ap profile to steer clients that can do both a and g to prefer “a” 5 GHz band where the spectrum is not very crowded.  Spectrum load balancing is in RF radio profile to load balancing clients to APs.  While the first configuration is prefer for all cases, the later configuration is very useful in the crowded environment such as conference room.  I had both of them enable, and found they are working great.

Any experts can confirm the Aruba recommendation about both band steering and spectrum load balancing should not enable at the same time?

Trinh Nguyen

[cjoseph]

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ngutri wrote:

I thought they are two different things.  Band steering to prefer-5 GHz is configured in virtual-ap profile to steer clients that can do both a and g to prefer “a” 5 GHz band where the spectrum is not very crowded.  Spectrum load balancing is in RF radio profile to load balancing clients to APs.  While the first configuration is prefer for all cases, the later configuration is very useful in the crowded environment such as conference room.  I had both of them enable, and found they are working great.

Any experts can confirm the Aruba recommendation about both band steering and spectrum load balancing should not enable at the same time?

Trinh Nguyen

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Where does it say that you should not enable both at the same time?

[NightShade1]

It says on the manual on the 6.1UG

Ill copy paste for you from the manual

"Best practices is to use either the Band Steering or the Spectrum Load Balancing feature to balance client load
across channels, but not both at the same time."

Page 160

[cjoseph]

Band-Steering moves 5ghz capable devices to the 5ghz when they are on a dual-band access point and trying to access an SSID that is broadcasting on both bands.  Spectrum load balancing tries to evenly balance users by radio or channel on each access point.  You should use one or the other to obtain predictable results.

Band Steering is applied at the Virtual AP level.  Spectrum load balancing is applied at the AP level.  

[NightShade1]

Thanks for the clarification Cjoseph

[pmonardo]

Should we disable band-steering and enable spectrum load balancing if we are running into issues with band-steering.?