Wireless Access

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Access network design for branch, remote, outdoor, and campus locations with HPE Aruba Networking access points and mobility controllers.
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To use DFS or not

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  • 1.  To use DFS or not

    Posted Oct 11, 2018 04:41 PM
      |   view attached

    Hi community,

     

    We have a large Aruba, controller-based solution deployed in our head-office in a large capital city. The workfoce is highly mobile in the office, with almost 95% of devices connected using wireless. The wireless has been deployed to try to steer users towards the 5Ghz as much as possible, and 95% of devices use the 5Ghz for accessing the wireless network. We get occassional complaints from users about random disconnects. We have been through a driver update refresh but still the issue persists. I then started looking at ARM (we are using 6.5.3.x) and noticed that almost all APs are detecting the presence of radar with varying degrees of frequency. I was therefore wondering just how much is usually acceptable? We don't get lots of complaints, but I'm not sure if users just don't bother to raise the issue. I'm wondering what people's thoughts are for using DFS here, we have around 130 APs deployed across eight floors and are aligned to the Microsoft and Aruba VRD for Skype for Business deployment. Would you advise to consider switching off DFS channels? I'm not convinced a four channel plan would work here? Any advice or insights would be appreciated.

    Attachment(s)

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    5Ghz-radio-arm.txt   226 KB 1 version


  • 2.  RE: To use DFS or not

    EMPLOYEE
    Posted Oct 11, 2018 05:01 PM

    What are the AP models you're running? What channel width(s) are you running? Lastly, what's the specific 6.5.3 build that you're running?



  • 3.  RE: To use DFS or not

    Posted Oct 11, 2018 05:26 PM

    Hi Charlie,

     

    We are using the AP-225, on 6.5.3.3, 20Mhz channels, with all 5Ghz DFS channels enabled for UK.

     

     



  • 4.  RE: To use DFS or not

    EMPLOYEE
    Posted Oct 11, 2018 05:51 PM
    @DarrenCarr wrote:

     

    We are using the AP-225, on 6.5.3.3, 20Mhz channels, with all 5Ghz DFS channels enabled for UK.

    Thanks for that feedback. It looks like there are a couple fixes that went into 6.5.3.8 specifically for radar false positives that may affect you.

     

    I'm not across the potential issues outside of the FCC regulatory domain, but when troubleshooting radar events I check to see how 20MHz channels operate. You're already there, so that should not be causing you issues. 

     

    What percentage of your client devices connecting to the wireless are also 802.11ac devices? Most of the 11ac clients tend to support DFS channels, but older clients were much more sketchy about the support. If your client device population supports DFS, upgrading to latest 6.5.3 or 6.5.4 could help. I would also look at how dense the AP deployment is, as well as channel utilization, to see if either of those are contributing to the false detections.