Cisco WLC and AP Design Questions

[bhupenderrawat79]

Hello,

I have a customer that have about 4 floors, which the first floor is a production/warehouse area, and the second,third and four floors are offices where he has about 150 users per floor, several of these users will be using skype for business (video conferencing) from time to time, he does have some meeting rooms that sometimes can have 200+ users at the same time, he wants also the best performance and speed for this type of events in these rooms,  he wants the maximum speed or the best performance for his users througout the entire building. He is not affraid to spend money for performance.

I will be doing a survey using ekahau, although I am concern about the potential bottlenecks. 

He has 100mbps uplink MPLS to frankfurt where he breaks to the internet and intranet.

Hence what would be the best WLC model to use for this case?

Should I configure LAG on the WLC? if so why and how can this help performance?

On the meeting rooms where he could have 200+ users how many AP's should i put on it and approximately how far? (yes ekahau may tell me this, but from your experience what is the best practice?, lets assume i will be working with 3802i's. what would be the recommended power level for these AP's? and how can I configure them it in such a way that the user(client laptop) chooses to stay on the meeting rooms AP's rather than in another AP in the floor? because if I am understanding correcly the client is the one who decides which AP to use not the AP's.

He may have few 802.11b clients in the production and office areas, but very few.

He also have several 802.11b wireless microphones on these meeting rooms which according my spectrum analyzer does have an impact on channel 6.

He does have a lot users using bluetooth mouses and headsets.

His users can support 2x2 TX/RX streams with an intel dual band ac-8260

He also have several click & share devices in several rooms which uses channel 36.

What would be best practice data rates configuration on the WLC?

should I enable clean air? if so why? 

Should I aimed for 5ghz deployment, if so should I use 40mhz, 80mhz or 160mhz channels? for this type of deployment? what is the best practice for this type of requirement?, my client is in asia. 

Any other feature that I need to enable on the WLC to improve performance?

The area is heavily congested by rogue ap's, which it looks to be user hotspots.

Thanks in advance!

[Rasika Nayanajith]

He may have few 802.11b clients in the production and office areas, but very few.

He also have several 802.11b wireless microphones on these meeting rooms which according my spectrum analyzer does have an impact on channel 6.

You should ask client to upgrade those 11b only devices. If you are designing WiFi today, should not enable 11b data rates.

should I enable clean air? if so why? 

Yes, you should get benefit from this feature. It is the way AP identify non-WiFi interference & respond to such event without impacting whole environment.

Should I aimed for 5ghz deployment, if so should I use 40mhz, 80mhz or 160mhz channels? for this type of deployment? what is the best practice for this type of requirement?, my client is in asia.

Yes 5GHz should be primary for your corporate access. If enough frequencies available I would suggest 40MHz.. 80MHz/160MHz is nearly impossible in enterprise environment ( You have to verify that Channel Width - Best option)

You could have 2.4GHz for Guest/IOT type requirements

HTH

Rasika

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[pieterh]

Yes go for 5GHz for your primary corporate network. you will have less impart from the rogue AP's 

but you wil probably need to enable 2,4GHz for devices that do not support 5GHz, but not on all APs.

Yes enable clean air , the controller can detect permanent and intermittent interferers and adjust channels on your access points so this has less impact on your performance (Event Driven Dynamic Channel Assignment)

in the high density locations use smaller cells using directional antenna's 

read the Cisco Validated Designs

[pieterh]

Should I configure LAG on the WLC? if so why and how can this help performance?

when using multiple WLANs you can terminate the wlan on a different VLAN, each vlan having a different port of the LAG group as primary.

-> potentially you can pass more data from the controller to the local LAN, but if everything goes to the internet using 100Mb link, you cannot use the full advantage of this..

On the meeting rooms where he could have 200+ users how many AP's should i put on it and approximately how far? (yes ekahau may tell me this, but from your experience what is the best practice?, lets assume i will be working with 3802i's. what would be the recommended power level for these AP's? and how can I configure them it in such a way that the user(client laptop) chooses to stay on the meeting rooms AP's rather than in another AP in the floor? because if I am understanding correcly the client is the one who decides which AP to use not the AP's.

-> you can only make the th cell size of the APs in and outside the meeting room as small as possible to have any control on the roaming of clients.

simple other option is "use a different WLAN" in these meeting rooms

He may have few 802.11b clients in the production and office areas, but very few.

-> are you sure this is only "b"?, b is very old, maybe they are capable to use "g", replace them as soon as possible. or use only a single AP to serve those clients.

->  be aware 2,4GHz may have a larger cell size than 5GHz in these production environment.

He also have several 802.11b wireless microphones on these meeting rooms which according my spectrum analyzer does have an impact on channel 6.

-> check if these can also work on 802.11g

He does have a lot users using bluetooth mouses and headsets.

-> in my experience the impact of Bluetooth headsets and mouses is limited. and if your main band in the offices is 5GHz the influence can be ignored.

He also have several click & share devices in several rooms which uses channel 36.

-> keep the power level of these devices at minimum, you can possibly configure some other channels

furthermore some of these devices can be integrated in your corporate network, so you connect not to the click&share wifi, but to your own wifi and the data flow goes to the presentation device via the LAN.

then you can disable the click&share wifi. (goes for Barco devices)

What would be best practice data rates configuration on the WLC?

-> disable 802.11b and g if possible

should I enable clean air? if so why? 

-> already answered in other post

Should I aimed for 5ghz deployment, if so should I use 40mhz, 80mhz or 160mhz channels? for this type of deployment?

-> already answered in other post

what is the best practice for this type of requirement?, my client is in asia. 

-> guidelines go for all countries

Any other feature that I need to enable on the WLC to improve performance?

-> that is too large a question to answer in a post; check the cisco docs like the CVD and wlan optimization guides

The area is heavily congested by rogue ap's, which it looks to be user hotspots.

-> that is too large a question to answer in a post this also cannot be answered remotely, it need not be a problem for office clients, but may be for external customers connecting to your WLAN's that irregularly switch to a hotspot.

[patoberli]

I suggest you use a local WLC in Asia with LAG (2 interfaces) enabled, attached to two switches that can do channels (for example Nexus in a VPC) for redundancy reasons. Alternatively a HA WLC setup.

Do the 802.11b clients need to connect to the wireless, or are they standalone systems anyway? If they are required to connect to the wireless, plan to use the 5 GHz for the clients, as the 2.4 GHz will be fairly slow because of those clients.

For the 200 users meeting rooms, depending on what those users do (listening to a speaker or work with video streaming), you require more or less APs.
For low wireless usage, I've made good experiences with 2, maybe 3 APs in the same room. Don't forget, the 2800 and 3800 series allow dual-5GHz cells, a tiny one and a larger one. In this case I'd put one AP with a 2.4 GHz cell and the other(s) into the dual-5GHz mode.

In any case, I'd really try to get those 802.11b clients to be replaced with 802.11g or better 802.11n. That will vastly improve the 2.4 GHz performance.

About the channels, if you use DCA, simply mark "Avoid foreign APs" and the WLC will try to not use channel 6 and 36 in the rooms those devices are in.
For the power levels, that is something your Ekahau measurement will tell you. As you are planning to use voice on wireless, plan for around 67 dB minimum, maybe even stronger.