Wireless Access

I was looking through our controller configuration and noticed some things that didn’t seem right and I was hoping someone could help out.

 

1. Spectrum Load Balancing – We currently do not have this enabled, but it appears that this feature should be enabled. We currently have issues with too many people connecting to APs and ignoring others
2. In our 802.11a radio profile > General > Channel - there is a channel set to 52. Should that be set or should we be leaving that empty?
3. One of our admins set a Min 2.4GHz power profile (to lower the power on 2.4GHz)  but when I look at the Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) Profile the Max Tx EIRP is set to 127 (the absolute maximum) and the Min Tx EIRP is set to 9 (slightly higher than default)

 

• Spectrum Load Balancing – We currently do not have this enabled, but it appears that this feature should be enabled. We currently have issues with too many people connecting to APs and ignoring others

If you have AOS 6.3 and up ClientMatch is enabled under ARM by the default and this will be managed by ClientMatch , the same goes for Band Steering 

• In our 802.11a radio profile > General > Channel - there is a channel set to 52. Should that be set or should we be leaving that empty?

If you are not using DFS channels you can leave that option disabled

• One of our admins set a Min 2.4GHz power profile (to lower the power on 2.4GHz)  but when I look at the Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) Profile the Max Tx EIRP is set to 127 (the absolute maximum) and the Min Tx EIRP is set to 9 (slightly higher than default)

If you have a very dense AP deployment you should consider setting that to 18/12 or even 12/6 (make sure you test this before making this adjustment because it could create coverage holes)

 

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@victorfabian wrote:

 

• Spectrum Load Balancing – We currently do not have this enabled, but it appears that this feature should be enabled. We currently have issues with too many people connecting to APs and ignoring others

If you have AOS 6.2 and up ClientMatch is enabled under ARM by the default and this will be managed by ClientMatch , the same goes for Band Steering 

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we are running aos 6.2.1.2, but everything I've read says that Clientmatch is a feature of 6.3 and above.

thanks

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my apologies , thats correct it is 6.3 and up

Is there a particular reason you want to enable Spectrum Load Balancing ?

In our heavy usage areas I'm finding 75+ clients connecting to 1 AP and leaving the other 5 APs with <10 clients connected.  I would like to force clients to connect to different APs

 

I would upgrade to 6.3 (or above) but my managers do not want to upgrade the OS and we would also lose RFplan feature of 6.2.

You can do a couple of things address this issue:
- Disable Lower Data Rates on the 802.11bg
- Adjust the power levels on your ARM profile to not be set to high

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@dmandula wrote:

In our heavy usage areas I'm finding 75+ clients connecting to 1 AP and leaving the other 5 APs with <10 clients connected.  I would like to force clients to connect to different APs

 

I would upgrade to 6.3 (or above) but my managers do not want to upgrade the OS and we would also lose RFplan feature of 6.2.

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dmandula,

 

You would have to weigh not having the RF plan feature in the controller, in exchange for ClientMatch, which is a great feature.  You also might want to evaluate Airwave if you don't have it, depending on the size of your deployment.  Airwave's RF plan is more functional than what is on the controller.

We are looking at purchasing airwave (and clearpass) and upgrading past the 6.3 barrier, but that is not in the scope of this project. 

 

dave

dmandula,

 

The best thing you can do is to constrain the power to between 12 and 18 in the short term to deal with your sticky client issue, first.  Cutting the lower rates like Vfabien says is also another thing you might want to do, if constraining the power does not work.

I have cut power to the high usage APs and all APs within RF range of those APs.  It appears to have spread the clients out.  I'll have to test futher. 

 

Thanks for all your help

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@dmandula wrote:

I was looking through our controller configuration and noticed some things that didn’t seem right and I was hoping someone could help out.

 

1. Spectrum Load Balancing – We currently do not have this enabled, but it appears that this feature should be enabled. We currently have issues with too many people connecting to APs and ignoring others.-  For now, leave spectrum load balancing disabled.  You could have clients attaching to the wrong access point, because the power on your access points could be too high.
2. In our 802.11a radio profile > General > Channel - there is a channel set to 52. Should that be set or should we be leaving that empty? - That Channel Parameter only comes into play if ARM is set to disable.  ARM is enabled by default, so you can ignore the channel.
3. One of our admins set a Min 2.4GHz power profile (to lower the power on 2.4GHz)  but when I look at the Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) Profile the Max Tx EIRP is set to 127 (the absolute maximum) and the Min Tx EIRP is set to 9 (slightly higher than default) - You should set the min TX EIRP to 12 and the MAX to 18, to start.  127 means the regulatory maximum.  The maximum for every access point would be too high for clients to connect and would create roaming/disconnect issue.  The 12-18 range matches the range of typical client power, and is a good starting point.

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