Do you recommend any? We use Zabbix but I am not able to make it work. Any other alternative? Where can I see these numbers in WLC?
I use Prime Infrastructure. I wouldn't anymore buy this as a new product.
Cisco by now uses a mostly standard netflow format, but make sure your software actually supports Cisco WLC Netflow:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/technotes/8-8/AVC_8point8_dg.html#pgfId-81615
I've made my decision but I am collecting more info for my manager. Now I am going to monitor traffic from/to WLC to verify that WLC uplinks can handle all the traffic. I would test FlexConnect on APs only in case they would insist on configuring it.
As stated many times, FlexConnect is very rarely needed if you don't transfer the data over WAN links. Depending on the size of your network (amount of APs) and the small 3504 WLC, you might saturate the 1 Gbps port. You can work around that by enabling LAG on more ports on the 3504, that way you can increase the throughput further: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/technotes/8-5/b_WLC_3504_Release_8_5_Deployment_Guide.html
Nowadays in most enterprise developments your AP density is fairly high, so that all clients have a strong signal with a short path to the AP. That way you can get a lot of performance out of your network, while providing good roaming. The big downside of this is the channel re-use. For this reason you often have 40 or even 20 MHz channels on 5 GHz, to maximize the amount of free channels. But this will vastly reduce the maximum throughput if no users are there (capable client assumed), but will vastly increase the throughput if many users are there.
In other words, with a 160 MHz 802.11ax channel (which limits you to 2 or 3 available channels), you could have > 1 Gbps of throughput with a single capable client. If you reduce this to 20 MHz you now have around 19 available channels, but a maximum throughput of maybe 250 Mbps. Those numbers are sadly only valid if there are no other wireless devices on the same frequency, which sadly doesn't happen in the real world, unless you are in a cellar For this reason you never really reach the high bandwidth when using 80 or 160 MHz channels, as you have way to much co-channel interference and noise which will lower the real throughput. Please note, those channel numbers are for the USA, there are various regulations over the world. In some places you only have one 160 MHz channel, or two/three 80 MHz ones.
