Wireless Access

last person joined: yesterday 

Access network design for branch, remote, outdoor, and campus locations with HPE Aruba Networking access points and mobility controllers.
Back to discussions
Expand all | Collapse all

Is it possible to limit an Aruba AP to broadcast only within a specified area i.e 5m X 5m

This thread has been viewed 0 times

  • 1.  Is it possible to limit an Aruba AP to broadcast only within a specified area i.e 5m X 5m

    Posted May 27, 2014 10:20 AM

    I have a reseller that advised us today that Ruckus now has a wireless AP whereby you can specifiy for the AP to ONLY work in a predefined area for example you have a finance department within a building (5 meters x 5 meters) and the area is enclosed by Window/partition. The AP is for their exclusive use and installed within this area.

    Once you step outside this area you will no longer pick up the SSID so there is no spill over. No one from the outside can access the AP/SSID.

    I am unable to find any information on the Ruckus website to support this or any case study on a financial institution.

    Any help/advice will be highly appreciated.



  • 2.  RE: Is it possible to limit an Aruba AP to broadcast only within a specified area i.e 5m X 5m
    Best Answer

    EMPLOYEE
    Posted May 27, 2014 10:30 AM

    We can tweak a couple of knobs to effectively reduce the cell size but geo-fencing at least in my personal history with wireless has always been an nice story but too difficult to get any accuracy on without a very dense deployment of APs or some other means like network software (not reliable) or some non-802.11 locationing technology like Bluetooth.

     

    Now, the knobs you can tweak include:

     

    1. Reducing the mac EIRP (to tune down the antennas)

    2. Setting a local probe request threshold to only allow clients with a certain signal rating to associate

    3. Turning off low basic AND transmit rates

    4. Configuring the SSID/VAP profile only on 1 or 2 APs in this location using the AP Specific parameters

     

    Other than that, I would argue why this is needed with role based access and our firewall.  If you have Clearpass, we can say only employees with a memberof or group of "finance" to connect to APs containing a certain AP-Name.  Less SSIDs is always a good thing!  



  • 3.  RE: Is it possible to limit an Aruba AP to broadcast only within a specified area i.e 5m X 5m

    EMPLOYEE
    Posted May 27, 2014 10:51 AM
    @Leroy.vanderwesthuizen@nu.co.za wrote:

    I have a reseller that advised us today that Ruckus now has a wireless AP whereby you can specifiy for the AP to ONLY work in a predefined area for example you have a finance department within a building (5 meters x 5 meters) and the area is enclosed by Window/partition. The AP is for their exclusive use and installed within this area.

    Once you step outside this area you will no longer pick up the SSID so there is no spill over. No one from the outside can access the AP/SSID.

    I am unable to find any information on the Ruckus website to support this or any case study on a financial institution.

    Any help/advice will be highly appreciated.

    I would ask Ruckus for more information....