Controllerless Networks

We have a school site with 15 x Aruba iap 93's.  Users are complaining of slow connection speeds and ipads not roaming well. From the GUI can see utilization is high (60-70%) on a number of APs. Even the APs with only a couple of clients attached are showing high utilization.

Firmware is the latest and the site only has approx 50-60 clients attached at the same time

Could this be just not enough APs ? Would it be worth trying to force the clients to use the 5ghz less conjested range ?

Any help much appreciated....

50 - 60 clients, depending on how much activity each client is doing, could be a little high.

What version of SW are you running? 4.0.0.3?

Is Client Match enabled?

5GHz will, generally, provide cleaner air than 2.4GHz; however, you coverage per AP is reduced.  Have you done a site survey to see if you are getting interference from neighboring APs or other non-WiFi devices on 2.4?  Not all devices support 5GHz so check the client types that are connecting.

Its running version 40930.

I've now enabled Client Match and will monitor over the next day.

Many thanks

Just an FYI.....the version running is several builds old.   That is the build number that corresponds to the 4.0.0.0 release.   IAP is now on 6.3.1.2-4.0.0.3_41784.

Ok many thanks

The version we are on is 6.3.1.1-4.0.0.0_40930

I presume you have high utilization in terms of RF?

Since the IAP-93's are single radio dual band AP's they will operate in the 2.4GHz band only by default. Since 2.4GHz has a very limited spectrum its possible to experience high channel utilization (and possibly noise) in this band.

Is there any reason you have implemented IAP-93's instead of IAP-105's? IAP-105 can do 2.4GHz and 5GHz concurrently. 5GHz has way more spectrum to work with.

If you have overlap in the coverage of these IAP-93's you could possibly configure certain IAP-93's to be in the 5GHz-band, but this is probably not ideal nor practical.

Yep indeed high utilization on the RF.

I've moved it over to 5ghz, all looks good so will monitor today.

105's would have been better but cost was an issue for our client.

Many thanks

I think you should recommend your cutomer that the time and effort put into troubleshooting radio issue is enough to cover the AP105 or even AP115. 

If you move everything over to 5GHz that will cause issues with clients that can only do 2.4GHz... Please be aware of this :)