disabling cleanair/rrm/...

[Jeroen Huysmans]

Hello,

I'm working at a customer who has several issues with WLAN coverage... The issues are currently "unclear" but I think it's fair to describe them as "coverage issues" because of coverage holes etc.

While investigating the Flexconnect controller (5520 HA cluster) I noticed some strange stuff:

• 2.4GHz:
• cleanair disabled -> is there actually any circumstance in which this is advised?
• DCA automatic, every 6 hours -> isn't this too long? The AP's are in open field, positioned on high altitude... several interferers are around (boats, ...)
• however they have several AP's running on fixed channel and fixed power control -> is this 'OK' combined with the automatic channel & power assignment for most of the radios?
• EDRRM disabled -> why would you disable this?
• 5GHz
• cleanair enabled
• DCA automatic, every 4 hours
• several AP's are running on fixed power control -> is this 'OK' combined with the automatic channel & power assignment for most of the radios?
• EDRRM enabled

I'm just looking for answers why it would possibly be a good idea to disabled best practices (cleanair, put some AP's in fixed channel/power assignment, ...). I can't help noticing several facts that seem to prevent the controller from executing the RRM that it will probably do pretty well...

regards,

Jeroen

[Leo Laohoo]

Talk to the customer.  I remembered working on a project to integrate a certain WiFi tag vendor.  The product wouldn't work in our environment until the vendor handed us the "requirements":  

1.  Data Rates 1 Mbps to 11 Mbps must be enabled; 

2.  DCA disabled; 

3.  All AP power to full; 

4.  CleanAir disabled;

and the coup-de-grace

5.  PSK.

It was a "JFDI" (just f*cking do it!) so it had to be done.  

[Jeroen Huysmans]

thanks... that's just what I expect it to be over here... 

No site survey and some vague conclusions. I was told some clients couldn't work with cleanair enabled.

I just wanted to check here is there are some valid reasons/cases when disabling cleanair etc would be a valid solution...

[Leo Laohoo]

I just wanted to check here is there are some valid reasons/cases when disabling cleanair etc would be a valid solution...

The only reason wireless products require CleanAir, particularly EDRRM, turned off is location tracking (aka RTLS).  

And because of this the product requires all channels to be hard coded and all power settings to be manual.  Any Cisco or industry-wide best practice guide is to be ignored when using this product.  

Another thing, this RTLS tag only operates in 802.11b/g.