Wireless Access

Hi experts,

I have measured the channel utilization of one of my customers at midnight and it has an average of 25%. I have measured the same at 11 am when the people is working and has increased but not so much, just 5% in some APs. It is a cluster of 8 IAPs and they are 15 meters far each other more or less. The cluster has 4 SSIDs configured and the network has little users, no more than 30 across all the cluster.

As the channel utilization is roughly the same in working hours and at midnight, I think it is due to co-channel interference and management traffic of the own network. I have seen the Wi-Fi SSID Overhead Calculator, and looking at 4 SSIDs (column) and 2 APs on the same channel (row) which is my case, the overhead is around 25%, which matches the channel utilization I have seen in this network:

Do you this channel utilization is due to my own network? Or it could be due to interferences or foreign networks? Is there any command to verify this? Thanks in advance.

Disable all of your SSIDs at midnight and then check the channel utilization.

Hi Colin,

Good point, I disabled all the SSIDs but one yesterday (because there were a few people working) and the channel utilization was reduced dramatically, here a couple of examples:

I did the change between 15:30-16:45 more or less. As you can see the channel utilization decreased until 10% approximately, and if I had disabled all the SSID would have decreased even more. Then I guess this channel utilization is due to the cluster's APs management traffic. One more question, what are normal values for high channel utilization or in other words, what value is considered for high channel utilization?

If  your channel utilization is at 40% during the day that is not bad, at all.

If it is at 25% at midnight, that provides an opportunity to possibly reduce it, but it if it does not exceed 50% during the day, you probably will be fine.

OK, thanks a lot!