Wireless Access

 View Only
  • 1.  ssid max associations

    Posted Nov 09, 2016 04:26 AM

    Hello,

     

    One of our customers has a few AP225/224s in areas of high capacity (eg there is a 225 in a lecture theatre). At the moment we have the max associations set to 64. Is there any reason why we shouldn't just bump that up to 255? initially we are looking at just doing that for these high capacity APs, and just for this customer.

     

    Also, would you recommend that we subsequently roll this out to our entire estate? We are running a mix of 7210 (master & standby) and 7220s. What are the potential issues - are there AP models that you wouldn't recommend doing this for? Where are the pinch points in terms of potential issues - the APs themselves? The controllers? The underlying network? (All 3?!)

     

    Thanks,



  • 2.  RE: ssid max associations

    Posted Nov 09, 2016 05:10 AM

    If you have Airwave, run an RF health report and see if you even have APs whose client number approach that.  The max associations is per radio...



  • 3.  RE: ssid max associations

    Posted Nov 10, 2016 04:51 AM

    To add to that, it is not uncommon to increase the max associations in high-density areas like you describe.

     

    Reason that the default is in there, is that under normal (office) circumstances you should never go over 60 associations; and that limit will make clients pick another AP. That does not work for some very high density where you cannot place more AP's. Higher numbers of associations will give lower performance per associated client. If your design took that into account, you can increase that number of max-associations in your config.

     

    In most cases you would not want that on all your AP's, and running the report like Colin suggests is a good start to see if your design and client estimates match reality. I would be very careful increasing the max-associations in your full environment as exceeding the 60 associations may indicate that you don't have enough AP capacity for office use.



  • 4.  RE: ssid max associations

    Posted Nov 11, 2016 03:47 AM

    Ok, thanks both. Sounds like we should limit the increase to certain areas. We'll certainly use Airwave to get some stats. In the end for these APs we went for a limit of 150 per radio so we'll see how it performs when the event that they are running takes place next week.



  • 5.  RE: ssid max associations

    Posted Jan 23, 2023 09:34 AM
    Edited by Steinar Grande Jan 23, 2023 09:43 AM

    Any Max Associations / Aruba AP type /clients ratio; to show to?,

    Regarding ISP speed?; switch ports speed?; 40/80/160 Mhz?; bandwidth 2,4/5/6Ghz ?

    reports/whitepaper to show ??

    ps,
    I see my ap's peaks at curent setting at 64

    ------------------------------
    Steinar
    ------------------------------


  • 6.  RE: ssid max associations

    Posted Jan 24, 2023 05:28 AM
    max clients (max associations) is per BSSID, so you should be good, unless more than 64 clients are on the same band of the same SSID on the same AP.

    There is no hard and fast rule based on the parameters you stated; only if the number of clients are regularly rising above 64 on a BSSID on an AP.

    ------------------------------
    Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

    HPE Design and Deploy Guides: https://community.arubanetworks.com/support/migrated-knowledge-base?attachments=&communitykey=dcc83c62-1a3a-4dd8-94dc-92968ea6fff1&pageindex=0&pagesize=12&search=&sort=most_recent&viewtype=card
    ------------------------------