AP Grouping per floor

[thewifidude]

How does everyone do their AP / RF grouping for large corporate buildings? Do you do by floor? By wing? etc.

[Haydn Andrews]

I normally do:

1 AP Group Per building - based on no requirements ever going to come about to have different SSIDs per floors.

Also based on my wireless design didn't call for areas to have different RF Profiles (IE higher density areas/ interference requiring a channel to be removed from the plan)

If its the type of company where there always changing SSID requirements then I would break down the AP group per floor or per wing (dependant on the areas likely to require change only)

Given one RF profile can only be assigned per AP group, if I had requirement to have different RF profiles for areas then that more AP groups.

With the 9800, generally speaking, I would have one site tag per building (unless flexconnect requirements need more) and do each AP based on its requirements for SSIDs and RF for the policy and rf tags

[Scott Fella]

I also deploy an AP/RF Group per building like what @Haydn Andrews stated.

[thewifidude]

Thanks @Haydn Andrews and @Scott Fella. I'm leaning towards single AP group. 

I do have this issue where the current design has each wing in their own /21 subnet for users. I want to change that to /22 per floor instead. 

There is a possible scenario where 2 of the 4 floors may require more RF profile tweaking which is why I was considering designing per floor. 

[Scott Fella]

I don't think that has anything to do with grouping ap's together or having ap's in the same rf group.  You do not want to have different RF groups within a building in which the ap's can hear each other.  It's different if you have separate building in a campus and there is no coverage between buildings.  AP Groups is similar, but helps keep things consistent.  You can have different AP Groups, for example you are testing a new SSID and want to have the SSID only on a few or only one AP.  

[thewifidude]

I guess the question comes up then about Cisco best practices mentions to use separate AP groups for conference rooms. Does anyone really do that?

The consensus seems to be to stick with the simple option and use a single AP group. I only have one scenario where I only need a specific SSID in a certain area.

[Scott Fella]

How old is that best practice guide you are looking at?  Keep in mind that there are best practices and then there are preferred ways to do things.  Keep it simple as possible, the more complex, the more groups, etc. the more headaches you will have depending on how large of an environment you have.  Even with specifying a unique SSID on a given ap or set of access points, you really don't need to do that unless you are testing. 

[Leo Laohoo]

I know of some people who like to unnecessarily "micromanage" their WiFi network.  

Unless each floor is separated by a faraday cage, there is no guarantee a wireless client on the 3rd floor will not join an AP located in the 1st floor.  

I am currently looking after a large hospital campus.  The hospital have about 30 buildings and we have divided each building into their own AP group for better management.