Wireless Water Cooler

My site is a campus with multiple office buildings -- "low-complexity" as Aruba puts it -- without anything terribly unusual, no grand sources of interference or anything, just the usual conference rooms and some open spaces.

As we plan for a campus-wide deployment of AP-225s, it seems 802.11ac and Lync haven't changed the AP planning at all from an ordinary "capacity" deployment of 802.11n (planning and site surveying being done by an Aruba reseller and Aruba). The RF targets are pretty much the same, e.g. APs evenly spaced about 40 feet apart, a -65 dBm signal strength at each cell edge.  Same as for "capacity" deployment of 802.11n, which might be fine.

But we keep hearing about how 802.11ac and voice apps like Lync mean a big change to the deployment from 802.11n.   Maybe our targets were already sufficient, or our RF environment isn't particularly challenging, so an 802.11ac/Lync deployment is really the same as an 802.11n/capacity deployment.

For typical office buildings in a suburban setting, would the site survey targets and AP planning/placement be changed much by 802.11ac and Lync?  (as compared to 802.11n and non-voice apps).

-nb.

Please read this documentation :

http://www.arubanetworks.com/pdf/solutions/SG_MicrosoftLyncHeuristics.pdf

http://www.slideshare.net/AirheadsSocial/breakout-airheads-macau-2013-microsoft-lync-unified-communications-cloud-application-control?qid=38e976c8-46f5-43b9-b6af-1446141d8bc4&v=qf1&b=&from_search=6

Yes.  Having read those documents, and many others (such as this one that includes capacity coverage for 802.11n) --

     http://www.arubanetworks.com/vrd/Indoor80211nVRD/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm

-- the question is: In the end, an 802.11ac/Lync deployment doesn't look all that different from an 802.11n/capacity deployment.  Still comes down to ~40 feet apart and -65 dBm.

Has anyone found that deploying 802.11ac and voice apps substantially changed your RF planning from what is now normal best practice for 802.11n "capacity" planning anyway?

-nb.

I think at the end of day things shouldn't change much from an RF perspective but of course for an application like MS Lync or any voice solution you need to look at how your clients will be roaming across your campus .

Definitely, Lync will change many things on the back-end (QoS, anyone?) -- but apparently not much on the RF side.  Thanks for the confirmation.

Haven't looked into what's involved with setting up for roaming, but I believe that too is all on the back-end? (mobility groups, IP scopes, etc?).  For that, any quick doc links would be much appreciated!

-nb.