Wireless Access

I have an open wireless network with a wide variety of unmanaged devices (laptops, tablets, phones, video streaming boxes, game consoles, etc.). Users are increasingly relying on wireless for video chat, voice, and live streaming.

In order to improve the user experience I am investigating turning on WMM. Currently, the only traffic shaping policy we have is "fair-access". Can anyone help me answer the following questions:

- How prevalent are WMM enabled clients? Is it common among the industry leaders?

- What happens to clients which don't support WMM? Do they automatically receive lowest priority? Are there issues connecting to the network?

- What are the RF ramifications? Higher channel utilization? Increased error rate?

- What are the biggest risk I would run by enabling WMM?

- How does WMM work in a high-density environment with high channel utilization?

- Are there any additional knobs I should adjust before enabling WMM?

Any insight into your experience with WMM would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Tony

have you looked at our ClientMatch technology?  We also have several features related to solving this issue through AppRF visibility.  WMM can be enabled sure - but we can also enhance other factors through making the RF simpler, smarter, more stable, and more secure for all devices and user roles within the organization.  

We on 6.3.1.2 with mostly standard settings, including ClientMatch.  Although we have seen some improvement in load balancing and sticky clients resolution, we still see voice and video as an area of concern.

Specific apps are of no real concern to us, we are more interested with their speed/jitter requirements.  How would AppRF compare to WMM settingsin our case?

Thanks,

Tony

Well - there were some performance tweaks in 6.3.1.3 which was released recently. 

However, I would enable WMM based on the fact that you have voice/video in the environment. 

AppRF will give you visibility into the environment (but you already have it) in terms of what the voice/video traffic is.  

In terms of channel utilization, there may be some congestion occurring in certain areas or interference as well (non 802.11 or CCI).  If you have Airwave, there is a really great dashboard called RF capacity that will point out your congested RF areas.  There is also a canned report called RF Health that can show you this as well.

Is there anything happening now in terms of user issues?  There are some other tweaks as well but I would strongly suggest brining in your Aruba SE or partner SE.

User experience is mostly positive.  There are some compliants about dropped service, but they are few and far between.

I will consult an Aruba SE regarding this feature; however, in order to get a broader perspective I am hoping that others could share their experience with WMM.

Specifically, what are the dangers of enabling WMM and is there a chance of denying service to non-WMM enabled clients?