Wireless Access

We have a brand new deployment of 49 single radio AP-93H APs in a long maze of a building with lots of 90 degree turns.  These APs are currently all using 2.4GHz and can see each other really well.

Our sales engineer insists that ARM is smart enough to move some of these APs over to 5GHz but I've been unable to get this to happen.  Both the 802.11a and 802.11g ARM profiles for these APs are both set to multi-band assignment and multi-band scanning. I've played around with min TX power, Ideal Coverage Index and Acceptable Coverage Index settings on both profiles and Client Aware is off on both.

I can't get any AP to switch to 5 GHz via ARM.

Quite a few APs look like this:

AP-ch-249-ap-93h:xxxx:11:18:20.5-Edge:disable : Client Density:0
Neighbor Data
-------------
Name IP Address SNR Assignment Neighbor Density
---- ---------- --- ---------- ----------------
ch-269-ap-93h  xxxx 8 11/9 0
ch-149-ap-93h  xxxx 45 1/12 0
ch-252-ap-93h  xxxx 22 6/9 0
ch-163-ap-93h  xxxx 8 11/12 0
ch-171-ap-93h  xxxx 14 1/12 0
ch-155-ap-93h  xxxx 10 6/20.5 0
sha-236-ap-93h  xxxx 6 11/15 0
ch-150-ap-93h  xxxx 13 6/9 0
ch-263-ap-93h  xxxx 15 1/9 0
ch-250-ap-93h  xxxx 13 1/9 0

The prefered behavior would be for some APs to be moved to 5 GHz and for the remaining on 2.4 GHz to be able to increase their power I'd assume.

Does anyone have any suggestions on why this particular AP isn't being moved to 5 GHz by ARM?  I'm running 6.1.3.1.

Thanks.

To clarify,  ARM does -not- automatically make any 2.4 GHz radio convert into a 5.0 GHz radio.

Instead ARM -can- automatically shut down radios that are not needed in a deployment (aka. mode aware ARM) thus telling you which APs you -can- switch into 5 GHz mode.(since they are 'extra' at 2.4 GHz)

So its really a two step process to get to your end-state from my viewpoint.

Hope that helps clarify.

JF

Thanks for your post.

I went to follow your advice and turned on "Mode Aware" but then I noticed the following:

Interface :wifi0
ARM History
-----------
Time of Change Old Channel New Channel Old Power New Power Reason
-------------- ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ------
2012-08-23 13:53:50 153- 153- 21 Max P+
2012-08-23 13:53:47 161 161 21 Max P+
2012-08-23 13:53:47 161 153- 21 21 I
2012-08-23 13:53:46 161 153- 21 21 I
2012-08-23 13:53:39 0 161 0 21 ON
2012-08-23 13:38:52 11 0 12 0 OFF
2012-08-23 13:33:03 11 11 18 12 P-
2012-08-23 13:26:34 11 11 15 18 P+

The controller seems to be claiming that APs _CAN_ switch between 2.4 and 5GHz via ARM.  But it seems that you have to have "Mode Aware" turned on as the transition can only happen if the radio is turned into an air monitor for a bit.  Can anyone confirm this behavior or am I seeing a reporting bug?

Thanks.



Tks for the note.

Single Radio Air Monitors always go between 2.4 and 5 Ghz... Why?  To provide 100% IDS functionality and scan 'all bands'.  There is no concept of mode-aware on an Air Monitor as its always (100%) in monitor mode.

Single Radio Access Points with mode aware ARM on, stay on the frequency band they are configured for and  can change channel within that band, power up, power down, or suspend transmission and switch to full time monitor mode. 

Hope that helps.