Bleeding signal due to MAX Power

[aliwireless]

I have been exploring a couple of wireless access points at work and have seen a lot of bleed through simply because the site survey was not correctly done at least according to my judgement.

We have all of the access points configured requiring at least 1MB to be able to associate to them and that increases a wider coverage area and hence a major source of bleed through although the other access points are on different channels. We use 1, 6, and 11.

My question is in order to avoid a bleed through would be advisable to reduce the power of in mW (milliWatts) or changing the association requirements such as 5.5MB will fix this?

Which is the best way to go about without majorly affecting the coverage area we have in place at the moment?

[mikespenard]

Limiting data rates wont change Tx power unless

you are filtering out 802.11g data rates.

The reason you can get better range with lower

data rates is not because the Tx power is changing,

but because the Rx receive sensitivity rating

improves with lower rates.

I recommend using more directional antennas.

Reduce your Tx power to something just above what

will give you the required datarates within acceptable

range.

www.signull.com has a free space distance calculator

that will help.

I cant say exacly what should be done, a survey would need to be done for that, knowing what equipment you have and the size/shape of area wouldnt hurt either.

[rpaquin]

I don't know how many ap's you've got, but the cisco WLSE is really a top notch product if you've got quite a few.. the site survey capabilites and the ability to adjust the spectrum and power of your ap's to your site conditions is very nice.

now if we could get the team who did this product to look at rme, that would be awesome.

in general, if you limit the power, you'll reduce the maximum range (at 1 MB), thereby causing less bleed.. but you may find without a proper site survey that by reducing power in an ad-hoc way, you'll create blind spots.

Although, if you got an ap in a conference room for example just to serve that room, by all means, go ahead and power it down to 50 or 30 mw, that way you'll at least eliminate some interference from the surrounding area.

I agree with the earlier post, that if you can, go with some directional antenna's.

You'll more focus your spectrum and get higher throughput rates and more localized area's creating less interference between ap's.

Cisco has patch antenna's with diversity, but also, check http://www.hyperlinktech.com, we've used some of their antenna's and have been happy, but there are plenty of third party antenna makers.

you'll want the patch directional antenna's with diversity (two antenna's in one patch) or otherwise, you need to have two antenna's sticking out for diversity.. not as asthetic.

hope that helps.