Wireless Access

We're sitting at about 45-65% broadcast frames here and wondering what might be wrong on the Wireless Side.

 

We have 3 SSIDs,

1) Domain machines - same vlan as our wired network

2) BYOD - VLAN #10

3) Guest - VLAN #11

 

I believe all areas where Broadcast Suppression are an option to be turned on, they are. In the VAP, in the Stateful Firewall, and in the IP section of the VLAN. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

You can check and see which AP most of the traffic is coming from on the dashboard. This may or may not help you zero in on a solution.

 

If you can offer up a little more info or any info on applications you may be running we could better help you out.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the suggestion. Checking it out, pretty much every AP has >70% of its Frame Type (to client) being the broadcast type.

I would turn on broadcast filter all (drop broadcast and unknown multicast) on all of your virtual APS (all three), if you have not already.

cjoseph - They are all setup that way already. I did, as a test, take it off of all the APs the other day and the network was pretty much unusable (wireless-side)

If there is little traffic, the majority of traffic would be broadcasts like the ap beacons. This is not typically a cause for worry.

There is not "little" traffic unfortunately. We have about 1200 clients connected at the moment. It seems like our performance is being hindered here. 

You should be looking at the channel utilization, which is the best barometer of if your bandwidth is saturated or not...

No problem, here is a little sample of some of the data.

 

All of the below are 2.4Ghz - our 5Ghz doesnt have high utilization due to the minimal amounts of 5Ghz devices we currently have.

 

Checking into the "Channel Busy" list of 30-40%, the following APs:

38% usage - 92% Broadcast Frames

38% usage - 46% Broadcast Frames

30% usage - 21% Broadcast Frames

30% usage - 31% Broadcast Frames

 

40-50%

49% Usage - 50% Broadcast Frames

41% Usage - 18% Broadcast Frames

 

70-80%

77% Usage - <1% Frames (Currently have an assembly)

 

 

Is this what you are talking about?

 

I am assuming that this on on the 2.4ghz band?  If so, there are two things you can do if you have high density:

 

- Make sure that the max-tx power for ARM on the 2.4ghz band is at 12 or below

- Remove some of the lower transmit rates on your SSID:  Please look at the article here:  http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Unified-Wired-Wireless-Access/Dramatic-utilization-reduction-in-2-4GHz-spectrum/m-p/92186/highlight/true#M2947

 

 

 

 

We have a higher density of APs in our Secondary buildings, and a lower density in our Primary buildings. Since we havent done this already, I think I'm going to work on creating new AP groups (one for each building) prior to making any adjustments.

What is your min and max transmit power in your ARM profile on the g band?

 

Currently 9 and 18 respectively. Prior to yesterday it was 9 and 127.

Ditto on pruning lower data rates.  This is one of the most effective methods to reduce channel utilization on 2.4GHz.

 

In your high density areas, you could also manually turn radios 2.4 radios off.  The idea is that you're trying to eliminate co-channel interference (CCI) given that you only have channels 1,6,11 available. I would only recommend this if you have a good understanding of RF fundamentals and can validate your coverage with a site survey or spot-check.  Otherwise, you may accidentally reduce coverage and create more problems for yourself.