Controllerless Networks

Good day-

I’m trying to get assistance with product/deployment recommendations for a high-density WLAN deployment.  This will be in a grandstand (at a race track) type environment which would include wireless clients underneath the grandstand as well as up in the seating/grandstand area.  Both downstairs (ground level) and upstairs (seating area) are open-area and ceilings are about 15-20 feet high on ground floor and 50 to 70 feet high in the seating area.  I'm guessing I'd be mounting the APs vertically on the back wall up in the seating area due to lack of access/height limitations of the upstairs seating.  The footprint of the building is roughly 90 feet deep by 200 feet long.  The number of wireless clients I’m trying to accommodate is 2000 devices (spread evenly between upstairs and downstairs).

 

If you have any suggestions or input, I’d appreciate anything you can offer.  I’m leaning towards controller-less hardware (Aruba Instant product line) but not sure of limitations with the Instant line with this high of a wireless client count.  I think I read at one time there is/was a 1024 client limitation with a single (16-AP) cluster.  I'm researching everything I can right now trying to ID hardware that could accommodate this client count.

 

Thanks in advance for any input, suggestions, or questions.  Cheers...

Sure. Here are the below data points I would like to share.

 

The only limitation what we have is with only when you have IAP 9X acting as a master we may not maintain more than 16 AP`s in a cluster. You can also configured IAP 105 as master as well. IAP 135 /IAP 225 acting as a master can handle better in terms of managing the database of AP count and client number. IAP master owns in managing the stats of all AP and client count since management plane is on master. There is no limitation with other AP models in joining to the cluster.

 

May I know what would be total ap count because when cluster is so big challenge would be with Broadcast/Multicast traffic when it is large broadcast domain. I would recommend if IAP count is larger than 128 it is better to split into muliple cluster, enable l3- mobility to roam between different cluster which will work great. By this way, easy to manage and reduced Broadcast/multicast traffic on the network.

 

Better to deploy the AP by doing site-survey in RF Enable the best practices from config end to optimize the broadcast/multicast traffic on the air. Adjust the radio power & enable client-match feature for load balancing the client count/smoother hand-over to AP`s in terms of clent roaming.

 

Below link/guide would give you an better understanding about High density deployment best practices.

http://www.arubanetworks.com/resources/reference-design-guides/

 

Hope this helps.  

Thanks so much for the response so quickly!  Very much appreciated.  I would expect the AP count to be well less than 128.  At first glance, we were thinking that an AP every 30 feet would give us (roughly) 6 APs on the ground level and 6 APs up in the seating area.  This would only be 12 APs plus, with external patio areas, another 4 access points.  But, if we are trying to accommodate what the customer asked us to budget for (2000 wireless devices) we'd see a density of about 150 connections per AP in this deployment scenario, assuming even client distibution.  I've seen other threads where people stay below 50 clients per AP (I think in IAP-105 discussion) so this means we'd need to triple the deployment count to about 50 APs if we wanted to stay at or below 50 clients per AP.  I was under the impression you could only have 16 APs (105, anyway) in a cluster, but that might be old information.

 

 I did look at the high-density auditorium deployment document on the Aruba web site prior to posting my message, but this shows how to plan the deployment but does not give suggestions on APs, from what I saw.  I don't expect this customer will have budget for controller, which is why I was trying to go Instant product line.

 

Again, I appreciate your input on the subject, if you have any. Thanks in advance...

 Ok and good to know that we have a AP count less than 128. We could increase AP association to 150+ so that more clients could connect. The info about 16 AP`s in a clusted limitation is only with IAP 9X and not with any other AP`s for now.

 

From the screen shot, you could see the parameter max client association threshold which is by default 64 and you could bump it to 150+ and even more for accepting more assocaitions to AP.

 

 
We may also need to understand like do these 2k clients count going to be active and expected to pass traffic or is this a seating count where user may or may not pass traffic concurrently.The way we had seen is that each user may carry min of 2-3 client (IPAD,Phone & Laptop) so if the total seats are 100 I would expect the scale between 250 to 300 users on the network associated on WLAN.
However most of the clients may not pass traffic concurrently and but just assoicate,pass traffic for a while and will be idle for some time and gets time out from network automatically.
 
Here the point is about the scale of total seats/active users. If this is scneario of just 25-30 clients pass traffic out of 50 actively and rest will be just associated and connected; we should be ok to maintain the session and fair enough on the network.

 

Thank you.

You're correct that the AP limit was previously much smaller when instant was first released. However, as it's grown and matured there are no more stated limits except on the 9X. You might look for the links to some of the airheads conference slides. During the Advanced RF Design breakout someone who commonly did stadium deployments talked. Might have had some good pointers.