30 close access points

[andy.butler]

Hi bruce, we've implemented a wireless network in a school recently. there are about 30 access points covering the whole school but due to the construction we can see about 11 access points at any one time. my question is reagrding channel set up. we've set each access point to dynamically select the least congested channel as we felt this was easier than setting the non overlapping channels as there will always be overlapping areas. we've set the access point to provide best throughput. we seem to be having a problem roaming between the APs and sometimes even connecting to the network. autentication is open and no extra security is implemented at this stage. can you advise if this is the correct setup or should we change this?

[gamccall]

Rule number one of good network design: Never let anything happen automatically that you can do manually. The "least congested" setting is a terrible idea in a multi-AP deployment- one incident of interference can trigger a cascade of channel changes that will ripple back and forth throughout your network for hours.

Get a floor plan with your APs marked and hand-allocate all your channels for minimum adjacency. Then tune all your APs down to minimum power and look for dead spots, then step up power one notch on one AP at a time until your dead zones are covered.

Or, buy a WLSE and let it figure out channel and power settings for you.

[hgauci]

If I'm not mistaken, and here I stand to be corrected, the least congested setting comes into action only at boot-up or when applied. Once a frequency is chosen this will not be changed automatically no matter what frequencies appear after the boot-up.

Can someone confirm this?