Balancing users across multiple Cisco 1242AG

[roopjmTDS]

I have been presented with this problem at work.

A client is going to have multiple 1242AG access points, and they want to know if it is possible to have one AP push some users over to another AP, if one of the AP's is being too overloaded.

ie:

say you have 20 clients in a room, 15 are using one AP, and 5 on another.

Is there anyway to configure these units to push 5 or so from the heavier used AP to the lesser unit?

They are not currently using a controller.

I appreciate any help anyone may be able to give me!

thanks

[vblavet]

Unfortunately there is no standard way to do that.

The association process and the roaming process is a client decision. Which means that the client hardware and driver will scan for available AP and then select the "right" AP depending on its own algorithm. (Generally based on RSSI). If an AP decide to disassociate a client to have him connected to an other AP, this might not occur because the client might reassociate to the same AP.

Autonomous Cisco AP deliver "load" indicator in probe messages as of CCX specification. However only clients which understand CCX will be able to load balance using this information.

Cisco Unified Wireless (lightweight AP) as a load balancing feature that can do better by refusing client association on a specific AP and waiting for the client to use on other one. If the client still tries to associate with the first AP, the controller will accept the client (to ensure connectivity).

Hope this helps

Vincent

[roopjmTDS]

Hey Vincent, thanks for the reply!

I found another question on here, that suggests using max-associations, and I believe that can have the desired effect. Seeing as the number of clients in the area will be static.

thanks again!

[Scott Fella]

You just have to make sure you don't have more clients than what you specify in the max-association on both ap's. You can probably get away with setting one ap with max-association (the ap that always has more clients) and leaving the other ap as-is.