Questions about Wireless Networking

[Challa]

Hello everyone,,

So I am relatively new to professional IT. I have been given control of a ton of things with the company I am with. One of those is our Wireless Network. We are not a huge company. About 200 in office workers total. We have 4 main buildings containing the bulk of those employees and a few warehouse with 2-5 people in them.

Currently we have one access point deployed in each building which seems to give enough coverage for the people in them. I have been focused on getting the new APs up and running with the WLC as when I came on with the company that had not been done yet. As I am past that now I am working to get the deeper settings configured on the WLC. One of the things I am a bit foggy on is CleanAir. I have had a few people I know that work in tech rave about it to me. I have been reading up on it and it seems like you need a dedicated CleanAir AP that does not transmit for the network. This seems like it doesn't fit our need. Mostly looking for confirmation here if I am correct on this.

My other question here is does RRM take care of some of the same things in a more limited way without the extra monitors?

Currently we have one AP per location and each AP is in a separate WLAN with its own VLAN. Given that these locations are pretty far apart would it be feasable and/or a good idea to merge these all into a single network with a single SSID so if someone is traveling in the company their devices will link up at all locations with no additional config.

And finally can someone link a guide or reference to setting a guest network that is isolated from the internal network? I will be honest that I have not even done a cursory google search on this issue yet as it is a back burner issue for me at this time.

[Leo Laohoo]

NOTE: Getting things WRONG in wireless is very, very easy.
CleanAir is a feature that enables select models of AP to operate "tune out" when the spectrum is heavily utilized. In early generation of CleanAir AP, if the channels are over utilized, the "best" thing the radio can do is power to the lowest settings. Note, this "lowest" setting still means the radio is still transmitting. Newer CleanAir AP can go from 2.4 Ghz to a micro-5.0 Ghz radio. Much more efficient.
And here comes the ugly side of town ... CleanAir and RRM are good. These features help maintain some form of sanity in the wireless spectrum. In the medical industry, this is the complete opposite. Medical equipment manufacturers do not like CleanAir, RRM nor DCA. If they had it their way, a WLC is a no-no. Medical equipment manufacturers strongly recommend set Tx power, set channel assignments. Some manufacturers even have "roaming" feature set to disable on default (undocumented) and requires root password to enable -- we're talking about a mobile x-ray unit here.

[Scott Fella]

Let me also chime in on this.... One of the things that I learned early on is that users want things to work and work well. Few things to keep in mind to make a wireless network stable with good user experience are the following:
- Same SSID at all locations, does not make sense to have different SSID's, because you can configure on and push that out from GPO.
- AP placements and density. Rule of thumb is to have good coverage on 5ghz, don't worry about 2.4ghz these day's. Also 25-30 client per ap unless you are also using VoIP, which requires less clients per AP. If you have dual band clients and you see that majority of your clients are connected on 2.4GHz, you need to review your ap locations and density.
- Make sure that your device NIC drivers are up to date
- Make sure you are using WPA2-AES not TKIP
- Make sure you are using a code verion that is recommended: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless/wireless-lan-controller-software/200046-tac-recommended-aireos.html
- Disable low data rates on both 2.4ghz and 5ghz, but this requires good ap placements and density
- Make sure you have at least 40mhz channel width on 5ghz as long as you don't have devices that are buggy with channel width higher than 20mhz
- Don't be afraid to hire a VAR to help you out.