Wireless Water Cooler

I've seen a lot of talk lately about treating 2.4GHz as an unusable wasteland when deploying new wireless networks. There are those that recommend things like not using band steering, separate SSIDs per band, or even disabling 2.4GHz all together. Has anyone tried this in a real-world environment either successfully or not? In the past I've run networks for hospitals, warehouses, and higher-ed and could never consider doing anything like that due to the need to support so many single-band, I had to design and operate with both bands in mind. Plus I wouldn't have wanted to give up those precious usable channels.

 

I've never actually seen this being done in a real-world production environment, either successfully or not, has anyone else? I know where I sit on the issue but I'm curious to know what others think.

I've heard of some going all 5 Ghz, but it definitely depends on the industry. As you said in some industries, such as higher ed, it's basically impossible for now as we don't always control the devices. In these situations where we are higher density we do tend to start turning off (or into air monitors) some 2.4 radios as needed to cut down on the junk in the air as we can. Many devices are 5 Ghz capable, so we tend to see less need for the density in 2.4 as long as we have technologies such as client match running.