Wireless Access

 

Requirements: Each class room needs the ability to login to windows 10 laptops (802.1x authentication) and download a 35MB mandatory windows profile to 15+ laptops simultaneously at the beginning at each class room session using 802.11g/n only laptops.  

 

Infrastructure: The wireless infrastructure consists of an AP225 in each classroom (30 classrooms in total) centrally managed by 7030 controllers with all the licenses.

 

Issue: The users experience during testing recorded that a maximum of 5-6 laptops would successfully login and install the mandatory profile in 3.5 minutes,  7-11 would eventually logon in up to 15 minutes,  and the remaining would error and not login. 

 

Troubleshooting: We’ve checked CCI, SNR and for RF spectrum noise with an Ekahau analyser and all looks ok. We’ve adjusted aitime fairness and load balancing parameters with limited improvement. The 2.4Ghz channel utilisation is at 100% during the simultaneous login, but we wanted to rule out any other potential (windows or otherwise) reasons why, in this scenario, the bandwidth would get so saturated for so long, before exploring and investing in 5Ghz radios.

 

Question: Has anyone experienced this educational login and profile download requirement and subsequently long delays for students to login and ultimately get access to learning platforms. If so, please advise

That is a high bar on a g/n-only network.  I would check the RF utilization at midnight to ensure that co-channel interference from other access points is not increasing the utilization.  I also did not think that anyone had large mandatory roaming profiles anymore, due to the huge demands it places on the wifi network.

 

With that being said, do you have Broadcast Filter ALL enabled on all SSIDS?  How many SSIDs are you broadcasting?

Sounds more like a Microsoft issue. They really shouldn't need to download a large profile with each login.

 

Move over to 5ghz. The lack of channel space in 2.4 makes it nearly useless in certain enviroments. (As you are seeing w/ 100% utilization)

 

AP225 supports 5ghz as does almost every laptop on the market. Is there a reason why you are stuck in 2.4?

 

 

 

 

The laptops are actually 2.4Ghz only, hence the restriction. Retro fitting a 5Ghz upgrade is not desirable

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I would argue that it's very desirable! :)

 

Surprising to hear that they do not have 5 gig wireless NIC's.

Perhaps they loaded the wrong drivers? Very rare to see a laptop new enough to support Win10 yet lacking 5ghz hardware.

 

 

 

 

 

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@mrprodgers wrote:
The laptops are actually 2.4Ghz only, hence the restriction. Retro fitting a 5Ghz upgrade is not desirable

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To be honest, there are many places that do not do roaming profiles due to the poor experience that logging in provides.  Having a 50 meg profile is painful whether wired or wireless.  These are people with wired networks, by the way.  In addition, you are on the 2.4ghz band, which has limited spectrum, in addition to having more devices that interfere with legitimate traffic and degrade it.  Those three factors combined restrict what you can do before you have even logged in.  

 

You should seek to change any of those factors to possibly improve your situation, because those weigh in more heavily than anything you would be able to do on the controller side..