Wireless Access

I received the following message in Airwave: Too Many Clients on Radio. Airwave suggests that too many clients are concurrently connected to the same radio which results in reduced capacity.

The Airwave threshold is set to <10. Currently, the AP shows 17 clients connected on the radio.

Airwave resolution indicates that ARM shoudl be load balanced from AP to AP and across bands.

 --- ARM should load balance from AP to AP and across bands. Sustained high rates will require adding capacity or more APs --

Are there different ARM configurations between the AP225 and AP135s? I have 3400 Series Controllers running the same config/OS(6.4.1.0) at different office locations. However, this is the only site enabled with Aruba 225 Series APs.

Are there different ARM configs required for the 225 Series APs that differ than AP135 that address this 'Too Many Clients on Radio' issue?

It would probably help to know what band and speed the clients are connected at.  If they are all 11ac clients at decent speeds it could be a non-issue, but if these are a bunch of 11g clients, it might be something to actually address.

You can apply various different profiles to particular APs by grouping them and building another virtual AP to apply to them.  Or you can test with an AP Specific override under menu item AP Configuration and the "AP Specific" tab.

Thanks for the response. Many of the 11ac clients are connecting at very high speeds ranging from 318 to 1.3gb.  

However, I noticed that the Goodput numbers are somewhat low for many of them( less than 100 Mbps).

I would still like more info about this threshold and what was used as a benchmark/best practice in setting these numbers in Airwave.

In AirWave, on the Client/Diagnostics tab, there is a 'Quality' session on the right side. In that section, there is an indicator: Too Many Clients on Radio with a 'Ideal Value' and 'Value'. 

Is the 'Ideal' value of <10 establish by Aruba as best practice/benchmarks? What was involved in determining/establishing the 'Ideal' threshold values? 

Are the 'Ideal' threshold values consistent with each release of Airwave? Currently, I running AMP 8.0.1.

anthony.i.brice

It is a built in default.  You should not worry about it, if you do not have performance issues.  It is just a starting number.  You have to understand your environment so that you can personalize that number and make it something you really need to take action on.  If it is working without issue, do not do anything.

With respect to performance, I have noticed a decrease in performance on the wireless workstation. I've observerd when the number of wireless clients connected to a single AP exceeds 20 or more, the wireless speed drops, usually from 300Mbps to 240Mbps to 200Mbps. As load on the AP decreases, it seems that the wireless speeds increase from 200Mbps to 300Mbps.

I read the posting about Spectrum Load Balancing or Band Steering. Would you recommend enable Spectrum Load Balancing by Channel/Radio? I have a dense deployment of AP135s. So, I'm leaning towards enabling Spectrum Load Balancing by Channel.  

Just make sure you have ClientMatch enabled in your ARM profile. It will take care of BandSteering, Load balancing and Sticky clients. 

What is the average number of users do you expect on a radio? 

Regarding the radio with 17 clients on it, is it 2.4GHz or 5GHz? What channel is it operating on? What is the client count on neighbouring APs and their channels?

Thanks for the response. I do have Client Match, Band Steering and modified EIRP levels on the ARM..basically followed best practices regarding sticky clients. So, I'm not seeing an issue with sticky clients.

During a typical workday, the average number of clients on a radio variers between 10 to 30 clients per AP. My wireless clients tend to be very active/mobile which results in fluctuations in number. As a result, the number fluctuates throughout the day.

With respect to 2.4 or 5Ghz, the majority(85%) of clients are connected at 5Ghz operating on 40Mhz Channels. I disabled 'Allowed bands for 40Mhz Channels' in the 802.11g radio profile and set the Max/Min Tx EIRP to 9, in an effort to keep clients from connecting to 2.4Ghz. Also, I have 80Mhz Support is disabled.

As a non-RF savvy IT manager, these numbers scare me. I was told that those artificially low numbers on the radio thresholds were primarily if you were doing VoIP. I ran an auction where 6 AP105's supported 400 smartphone web surfers. I would hope that an AP225 (or 275s in my outdoor environment) would handle 60 clients per radio,

Anthony,

Based on the information you provided, it doesn;t look like your radios are overloaded. Airwave threshold value can be configured to higher number. 

In a high density environment this number can be configured to 60 clients. 

If your users are complaining about performance, then you should rather look at the ClientDiagnostic page in Airwave by putting user IP or mac address.