Channel overlay in VRF

[the.sleeper]

Can someone clarify for me, what is indicated by the color shapes

here:

Visual RF, with

Visual RF, with the "Channel" overlay selected in AP Overlays

[Herman Robers · Accepted solution]

From the help section:

Channel, then click to select an option, such as Signal Cutoff, Band, Channel, or Floors. This overlay identifies regions covered by specific channels, or regions with overlapping coverage on one selected channel or all channels in the 2.4 Ghz or 5 Ghz radio band. Hover your mouse over coverage areas for details about the APs.

What this overlay helps you to understand is at what locations your have Co-Channel-Interference (CCI), or where you are in the reach of multiple APs that are transmitting on the same channel. You can set the Signal-Cutoff to control what signal strength is considered overlapping. In short, in the marked areas in your screenshot, at those locations the client can see two or more Access Points transmitting on the same channel.

In WiFi design, in general, you try to reduce the CCI, so try to keep this overlay as empty as possible while keeping the overall coverage (all channels combined) as good as possible.

[the.sleeper]

Herman,

Thank you! I understand CCI, but VRF merely labels it as "Channel" so I wasn't clear that that meant CCI.

So, if I am seeing signal from a different floor, does that mean I should be tweaking power settings for those APs? Isn't that something that ARM would handle automatically? 

[magnumpi83]

What's a good signal cutoff for this display?

[Herman Robers]

That depends what you want to do with it. When set to -65 dBm, it shows where the real problems are with CCI. The default setting of -75 probably is most useful. If you can configure your environment to have little overlap at that signal level, that is good. Please note that tweaking your environment just to get this good might not be the optimal setup. It is just one view to take into account and balance the choices for the best design of your network.