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Trouble with clients on 5ghz radio / range

Joshua Watkins
Level 1
Level 1

Hey guys,

 

Need some guidance on an issue I am experiencing lately with my installations as it pertains to 5ghz radio coverage.  I am in a unique situation and work for a large MSO, we have a Centralized WLC 5508 with global parameters set that obviously affect every install I have.  I would suspect that most folks would have a smaller controller per install, but I don't have that luxury.   

 

Problem:  Hotel with 2 floors, no crawlspace between 1st/2nd floor, so I can't run ethernet cables and have to resort to placing all of the AP's on the 2nd floor.  AP's being used are 2602i's, and I have the density of AP's and the power levels set such that I can get decent 2.4ghz performance down on the 1st floor.   Now the problem, the 5ghz coverage isn't good on the 1st floor and I feel like the complaints I'm getting of "dropped" connections are due to devices attempting and connecting to the 5ghz band and as the user moves about, they lose the already poor 5ghz signal and must reconnect.  When I do a walkout with Airmagnet I can see the 5ghz radio's of the AP's with a -5 to -10db variance to the 2.4ghz band on the 1st floor, I get an average of -60 to -72'ish rssi on 2.4, but 5ghz is -70 to -85.  So just enough for devices to "try" 

 

My question is around how I can disable or prevent users from hitting that 5ghz band, but more specifically I would need to do it from a WLAN/AP group perspective as I can't globally disable the 5ghz radio in the controller because it would affect other installs.  I could perhaps modify the Client Roaming/ low RSSI check options, but I'm not sure where to start as I am a little new to deployments of this scale.

 

Any help would be appreciated, and before anyone bashes me, I'm not in anyway condoning this being a great way to have this setup, but I don't have many options.

1 Accepted Solution

Accepted Solutions

Nigrofasciatum
Level 1
Level 1

You can apply radio policies on SSID basis. If there is a unique SSID in the hotel, you can configure the SSID only at 2.4GHz.

Otherwise, it makes sense to create a RF profile with radio policies to apply (you can disable all 5GHz data rates). Then, create a AP group with the APs of the hotel, and assign the RF profile to the AP group.

Be sure su really needn´t 5GHz band...

View solution in original post

4 Replies 4

Nigrofasciatum
Level 1
Level 1

You can apply radio policies on SSID basis. If there is a unique SSID in the hotel, you can configure the SSID only at 2.4GHz.

Otherwise, it makes sense to create a RF profile with radio policies to apply (you can disable all 5GHz data rates). Then, create a AP group with the APs of the hotel, and assign the RF profile to the AP group.

Be sure su really needn´t 5GHz band...

Thanks Nigrofasciatum,

I currently have a unique SSID for the hotel, setup in a unique WLAN, with a unique AP group associated to it.  

Under Radio policies I have a few options, "all" "802.11a" "802.11a/g" "802.11g" "802.11b/g"  In this case I'm guessing the correct option would be 802.11b/g or 802.11g?  I selected 802.11g yet I still see in Cisco Prime my 5ghz radios are on.  Is it perhaps because they stay on just clients aren't able to connect to them?

I definitely don't need the 5ghz band as I am restricting users to 4mb down/2mb up, as it is a free hospitality type solution.

Yes, you should use the option 802.11b/g.

 

You continue seeing the radios 5ghz on, because you are not disabling radios, you only are not broadcasting your ssid on the 5 ghz radios. 

 

5ghz are useful in high density or interferents enviroments.

Ok thank you for the clarification of the radio policies, I was expecting the radios to be off so figured something wasn't right but it makes sense now.  I use Airmagnet Spectrum analysis during my site survey to try and mitigate and understand the interference, and thankfully this particular place did ok in that regard, I will keep an eye on performance after shutting 5ghz off.  Thanks again for the information!

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