large venue WIFI

[terminalvelocity777]

What are the best AP's to use in a concert hall type venue with a large nunmber of client users and how do I make it so that they are spread across the AP's and not just filling certain ones up?

[terminalvelocity777]

I agree, great information and tips from guys who are in the know many thanks to eric and others who responded.

Mick

[terminalvelocity777]

Following on from my initial question, the venue we are covering holds 5000 people. In a broad sense how many AP's would be required to cover for amount of users (what is the ball park figure for how many users can be on an AP with good performance) I realise this is a vague question but any answers would be appreciated.

[Leo Laohoo]

By default, 12 clients associate to one AP and the maximum is 75.

I doubt if you can find 5000 people simultaneously using your WLAN.

You can install between 300-500 AP's.

During the intial setup phase, I would recommend that you constantly monitor your client numbers. Install 300 and if it reaches the saturation point, then put extra AP.s If not, you can always pull down the AP's.

Hope this helps.

[ericgarnel]

We just hit 5278 simultaneous users at SXSW.

I used only 135 radios strategically placed.

Mostly 1252s with a handful of 1242s and about 4 1020s for nooks & crannies.

The field kits worked like a champ! For the high density key note, we deployed radios under chairs and secured them to sandbags with cable locks.

Radio count depends upon your environment and other factors.

There were lots of iphone users that really hammered our dhcp servers! We starting seeing buffer errors on the gig nics. Switched one of the servers from linux to freeBSD and it handled the load much better.

[Leo Laohoo]

"I doubt if you can find 5000 people simultaneously using your WLAN." < --- I take my words back and will eat a humble pie. :P

What did you set your Client Threshold to (default is 12) Eric?

[ericgarnel]

5592 was the magic number yesterday!

Today will be the last chance to beat it, before the interactive part of the event winds up.

I am assuming you are referring to the profile threshold for traps, if so, that # is 75.

[terminalvelocity777]

Hi Eric,

It was a general question about how many clients can actually associate as a rule of thumb. Depending on where you look it says anything from 2048 (eek) to 10, i know it depends on the apps etc etc.

But I just wanted a guideline answer if one exists of what an average amount of clients to an AP is in a good working system.

Thanks

Mick

[Leo Laohoo]

Mick,

By default, the WLC is configured to 12 but Cisco says 25 is OK. You can configure this to hit the maximum number of 75.

[Leo Laohoo]

Hey Eric,

Have you broken any more "magic numbers"?

[ericgarnel]

Nope, the event is over. We will wait until next year to try and break the record. A few observations...

In the ultra high-density areas where there are many rows of chairs, you will need to place APs under and around the seats. We used 1242 radios this year because that is what we had on hand. Next year, we hope to use a radio with integrated antennae. I would make my rounds though the building during the day just to correct antenna polarity on all the low APs with "rubber ducks". People feel compelled to play with the antennae for some reason.

We also saw an interesting issue with our isc-dhcp servers running on CentOS with the default buffers for /proc/net/ipv4:

the buffers would fill up and the servers would not be able to dish out dhcp requests fast enough! I would do a tail -f on /var/log/messages and watch the file scroll by rapidly. It looked the "Matrix" screensaver! I bumped up the buffers on the servers, moved some of the other services like dns to other boxes and brought up another dhcp server running freeBSD which seems to handle the load better. I am more comfortable with Linux, but freeBSD is similar enough to Linux that I can work with it.

Also, the lowest height setting in WCS floor area ap positioning is 3ft (@1m). I am going to ask if Cisco can change it to 1 ft.

[Leo Laohoo]

Thanks Eric.

"People feel compelled to play with the antennae for some reason." < --- What they do during their spare time is non of my business!

:)