Cisco 9013AXI Single AP Best Practices

[timgrantham]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a bit of advice - I have a single Cisco 9130AXI access point at home which I have set-up according the the best practices analyser.

The question I have, being a single access point in the whole environment, is there anything I shouldn't have enabled, or should have enabled?

Thanks for your help!

-Tim

[marce1000]

 - I guess for home use , there is not much tweaking to do , if basic defaults are in place. Unless for instance you don't want to use 2Ghz. You may want to look at this : https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/WiFi_Basics_and_Best_Practices . most of  the items are already targeting business environments.

 M.

[timgrantham]

Thank you for the reply!

I've seen that link before, and a lot of the best practices are for infrastructures that have several access points - and take that into consideration.

What I'm trying to get an understanding of, are things like Clean Air, RRM, FRA etc. is there anything that's recommended to set these when you have just a single access point?

And the Radio settings, am I better off manually setting these to 8x8, or letting the AP do what it's done and have a 4x4 and a monitor?

[Leo Laohoo]

Disable 802.11ac, 802.11ax and only use 802.11n (40 Mhz channel bond).

[timgrantham]

But I have several ax devices, why would I want to only use 802.11n?

[Leo Laohoo]

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@timgrantham wrote:

why would I want to only use 802.11n?

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Because 802.11ac and 802.11ax are just marketing "folly".  Let me explain: 

The biggest problem with 2.4 Ghz (aka 802.11b/g) is the limited amount of useable channels.  There are only 3:  Channels 1, 6 and 11.  

The theoretical speed for 802.11ac wave 2 is 6.9 Gbps.  For something to achieve that, the 802.11a channels will need to be bonded to 160 Ghz.  This will bring the number of useable channels (blocks) down to 4.  

Take 4 channel blocks in an enterprise environment where every neighbor has their own set of APs and fighting for a chance to speak in a highly congested airspace.  

Next, how many portable devices can actually process 3.5 Gbps worth of data.  Take note, I said "portable devices".  

802.11ac and 802.11ax are "nice to have" but neither necessary nor a necessity.  

[timgrantham]

Yes, but this is a single AP, and not in an enterprise environment,  this is at home, so channel overlap etc. is not an issue.

Plus I need the bandwidth as frequently edit files stored on servers - and 802.11n just doesn't stream raw 4K/8K very nicely.

80GHz ac just about can cope with raw 4K.

[Leo Laohoo]

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@timgrantham wrote:

Yes, but this is a single AP, and not in an enterprise environment,  this is at home, so channel overlap etc. is not an issue.

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Your call.  Make sure your neighbors are not blasting their own WiFi.  
The only way to get 802.11ax working, with maximum speed, is the entire house is wrapped in a Faraday cage/mesh or the house is located in an isolated area with nothing around it for 100 metres.

By the way, do you have an mGIG-capable switch?  

[timgrantham]

Yes, have a mGIG-capable switch and also with where I live there aren't many issues with neighbours and WiFi, fortunately

[Leo Laohoo]

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@timgrantham wrote:

have a mGIG-capable switch and also with where I live there aren't many issues with neighbours and WiFi, fortunately

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Cool, then go for it.  

[marce1000]

          - FYI:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/12/30/802-11ac-vs-802-11n-wifi-whats-the-difference/

 >...

  WiFi is always promoted using ‘theoretical’ speeds and by this standard 802.11ac is capable of 1300 megabits per second (Mbps) which is the equivalent of 162.5 megabytes per second (MBps). This is 3x faster than the typical 450Mbps speed attributed to 802.11n.

 M.

[Scott Fella]

There is a best practice like what you see in the controller, but everyone here might still do things different.  This is not a bad thing, as long as your devices are connecting and you are not having issue, then you are good.  Streaming 4k/8k over wireless is something you might not achieve.  Are you able to stream 4k/8k with your other wireless before you got the 9130?  Does your media player have any any issues with transcoding or streaming those movies?  

Keep these two things different.  My suggestion is you follow what the best practice guide on the GUI has and what others might suggest.  Then with streaming, maybe you need to find another method or transcode that to 1080.  I run Plex at home and I can't stream a 4k well enough that I like it, so its all 1080 for me.  I might try it later when I get my new NAS that have 10g ports just to test.

[timgrantham]

I'[ve followed the best practices guide to 100%, just getting the occasion channel flip flop under heavy use - thought I had sorted that, but it cabe back and what I disabled was just a red herring.

I was more interested in if there is anything that is in the BPA that is overkill for a single access point configuration, and good practices to disable in such an environment.

I can stream with the Apple TV 4K without issues, using the "Computers" part and AirPlay - it works well, just until the AP sees the channels as being heavily used and then flip flops between the 2.4 and 5Ghz radios.

[Scott Fella]

Not really any best practice changes from enterprise and home.  The only thing you can do is tweak the RF.  You can always set your access point to a specific channel and or set RRM to only change every 24 hours.  When I test on a specific ap at home, I would set the channel and set the power level to 1.  When I'm done testing, I would let RRM only change the channel every 24 hours, default is 10 minutes.  Take a look here for changes you can make globally.

Configuration | Radio Configurations | RRM

[Scott Fella]

Here are some screens shot from my 9800 Controller, should be the same to the EWC