In my current environment, I have a single WLC 4404 and a handfull of 1142 AP's. I am using 802.11a.
In one particular large room, I have 2 AP's that cover the room. Both AP's are mounted on the opposite sides of the room. One of the AP's (lets call it AP-A) is mounted very near to the main entrance to the room. Typically, there are about 70-80 wireless clients in this room during meetings.
The trouble I am finding is that on average, about 2/3 of the clients are connecting to AP-A that is near the entrance. So the client split is usually about 50 (AP-A) to 20 (AP-B). This leads to clients on AP-A suffering slower speeds and on occasion AP-A drops connections and requires a reset. AP-B has never encountered this issue.
Now I gather that as people enter the room their devices connect to the first strongest AP they see (which is AP-A). After testing with my own devices, I notice that as you enter the room and connect to AP-A, devices will not switch to AP-B on the opposite side of the room until you are almost right underneath AP-B. Ideally, I would like clients to switch to AP-B at about the halfway point in the room.
Currently the TX power level is set to auto and both AP's and the WLC has set the power of both to 1.
What methods can I use to ensure that as users enter the room their devices will more than likley switch to AP-B once they cross the halfway point in the room?
