Wireless Access

In one of our buildings, we have a library that has around 30 wireless XP clients (with B/G/A NICSs) and around 30 iPad 2s (dual band as well). We have two Aruba 135s covering the library that are about 50 feet apart. We had Band Steering turned on with the prefer 5 GHz option enabled, but we started to notice some weird issues. Band Steering would push all of our clients to the 5 GHz band, which should be fine, but, we noticed when one of the APs would have 45 or more clients on the 5 GHz radio, the AP would push the clients off to the other AP, or even a different area that was further away from the library. 

We then enabled Band Steering with the Balance Bands and we are now noticing that all of the clients now are being pushed to the 2.4 GHz some days, and on other days, all clients will be pushed to the 5.0 GHz band. The APs never seem to balance the clients across the bands like intended. Has anyone ever encountered this? Is this normal behavior for balance bands? 

Also, our controller is on OS 6.2.1.3. Thanks! :smileyhappy:

The thing is that band-steering will try steer the client to 5Ghz by then the spectrum load balancing won't take effect unless you have channel load balancing instead of radio loading which seems you are doing based on that screenshot 

So, Band Steering will push clients to the 5GHz band, even when balance-bands is selected, as opposed to prefer 5 GHz? My assumption was balance-bands would attempt to balance clients evenly across radios. We seem to have random results each day. Thanks.

Please read this post :

http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Unified-Wired-Wireless-Access/Spectrum-load-balancer-or-band-steering/td-p/22384

We do not have spectrum load balancing enabled. I was just wondering if anyone has seen clients balance across radios while using Band Steering balance-bands. If balance-bands is intended to serve a different purpose, please let me know. Thanks.

Based on this explanation from the 6.x guide it seems it does balancing based on the amount bandwidth available :