Avoid Cisco AP Load Option

[mike.hume]

Hello,

I am planning a dense deployment of access points in an area and discovered this option when looking through the WLC. This is more of a question of what this is and why it isn’t enabled by default. When I read this option I take it as, if you have an access point that is 5ft away from you and has many clients on it and then you have another access point 15ft away with no clients on it, you would associate to the one 15ft away because you will have better performance. When I do some searches for this topic I find people saying you should check this in dense deployments because it is exactly what I am thinking it is. In other discussions I see people making comments of “this is never recommended that you do this”. I was hoping someone could explain it a little more.

[Stephen Rodriguez]

It's a setting that tries to influence the client to attach to an AP that is less busy, key word here is tries.

When load balancing is enabled, an AP has a lot of clients will send a message type 17 to the cleint, basically saying I'm busy go talk to .  It's up to the client to listen and honor that message. 

If the client decides to ignore that message on the 4th attempt, IIRC, the AP allows that client to join.

This can cause significant delay in the client joining and passing traffic.  Hence it's not recommended to use, as it generally causes unneeded delays.

HTH,
Steve

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[mike.hume]

Thank you for the clarification Steve.