Wireless Access

Hi all,

I have been tasked at upgrading the WiFi in our office which consists of 2 floors across 2 wings (4 floors in total). Each floor is 50x20 metres with approx. 2.5m reinforced concrete so signal propagation between the floors doesn't really occur. There are 400 potential users throughout the building but only ~100 are connected at once.

Currently there are 6 AP105s on each floor (Horizontal Mounted against the walls) connected to a 7210 controller running ArubaOS 6.4.2.4. We are currently running a pilot with a 205 where we have mounted it horizontally and switched off 3 of the AP105s around it. We have not seen any adverse effects from this but there is the occasional CPU spike on the 205.

After doing some research, I have found the 3 200 series option but there doesn’t seem to be many real-world examples of AP 205, 215 and 225 usage. Each floor will have approx. 30-50 WiFi users. The users will be doing web browsing as well as opening small-medium office documents. I think the spikes I’ve been seeing are users logging on and off when the files sync.

After all the spiel, the question is this: How many users can each model support when web browsing and opening office documents? Which model would you get for this scenario?

Bonus point: what do aruba class as low, medium and high density deployments?

Many Thanks.

Consider these very rough figures:

AP-204/5 - up to 50 users across both radios (25 per radio), low to medium density deployments

AP-214/5 - up to 75 users across both radios (35 on 2.4GHz, 40 on 5Ghz per radio), medium to high density deployments

AP-224/5 - up to 125 users across both radios (50 on 2.4Ghz, 75 on 5Ghz per radio), high density deployments

The 210 series will give you slightly better range over the 200 series due to the better radio characteristics and 3x3 11ac MIMO. 225 has the most memory and CPU to ultra-high user loads.

Thank you for this. I think we will go with the AP215 as we aim to have about 20-30 laptops connected to each AP (mostly light web and file usage - 5GHz) but we are also looking to deply smart phones with ~30-40 connected to each AP (next to no usage - 2.4GHz)

From what I have read (and seen looking at stats) these numbers shouldn't really phase a WAP as they are low usage devices. If these 20-30 people were working with high bandwidth 4K files then that would be a completely different story!

Does the 215 have more cpu or memory than the 205 at all?

We do not need density in 90% of our building (400k square feet of manufacturing), though have medium density in our office area.  The 215 sounds like a good compromise for our manufacturing area, but I am curious if it has more CPU or RAM vs the 205.

Also, I know the 215 and 225 are more similar, but would there be issues mixing 205's and 225's?  Since they use different firmware, and different radios I am wary of issues.  I was thinking since 205's are cheaper, we could use them in low density areas that are surrounded by signal absorbing shelving/racking to provide 5ghz, and use the 225's to provide 2.4ghz and 5ghz.  I am definitely concerned about the ability of a client to roam nicely from 205's to 225 seamlessly though. 

Yes the 215 has more CPU and RAM than the 205, which is why it's geared more towards medium-density environments (up to 50-75 users per radio for normal use). 

As far as mixing, so long as they are not 'salt and peppered' and you are more logically breaking your deployment of low-density and high-density areas, it should be fine. Some clients will prefer 3x3 over 2x2, so when salt and peppered and mixed heterogenously, it can create weird client behavior sometimes. But if you put 205s in lower desnity areas where clients can roam, separately from higher density areas, you should be fine.

---

@jhoward wrote:

Yes the 215 has more CPU and RAM than the 205, which is why it's geared more towards medium-density environments (up to 50-75 users per radio for normal use). 

As far as mixing, so long as they are not 'salt and peppered' and you are more logically breaking your deployment of low-density and high-density areas, it should be fine. Some clients will prefer 3x3 over 2x2, so when salt and peppered and mixed heterogenously, it can create weird client behavior sometimes. But if you put 205s in lower desnity areas where clients can roam, separately from higher density areas, you should be fine.

---

Jerrod,

Is there an Aruba document somewhere that talks about all of these points? I'm studying for my ACDX and I need that information if I'm to correctly design for a site. You'd mentioned medium and high density deployments, but there wasn't any mention as to what you're basing that off of. Assuming a 20k sq. ft. floor with 200 users, what benchmarks and guidelines should I use when picking the correct AP?

Any advice regarding this would be really helpful. Thanks in advance.