Maximum No. of SSIDs

[isoffice1]

Hi all,

I have a quick question that hopefully someone can answer.

We have a Cisco 4402 Wireless LAN Controller (S/W Version - 7.0.116.0) centrally managing 36 Cisco Wireless Access Points (combination of AIR-LAP1231G-E-K9 and AIR-LAP1242AG-E-K9).

How many SSIDs can I broadcast with this particular setup?

Many thanks for your assistance in this matter.

JP

[George Stefanick · Accepted solution]

I want to say this model isnt restricted to the 8 SSIDs, so with that being said it supports 16. HOWEVER, access points sends beacons and as such have to abide by the same air time fairness. So I wouldn't advise doing more than say 6. In fact, if you take 1 ap and enable all 16 ssids and check channel utilization you will see upwards of 50%+ JUST FOR BEACONS.

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"Satisfaction does not come from knowing the solution, it comes from knowing why." - Rosalind Franklin

[isoffice1]

Hi George,

Thank you for your prompt reply. I was leaning toward 16 SSIDs myself but just needed a bit of confirmation. We are actually on 10 at the moment and I was concerned this number would cause problems. I should probably rationalise the network and reduce the number of SSIDs being broadcast. However, as we are due to replace the wireless solution within the next three months I'll let the current configuration stay for the time being.

Many thanks again,

JP

[George Stefanick]

Lets be clear about broadcast and supported SSID.

Regardless if the SSID is broadcasted or not, if its enabled it will use network medium. The beacon is still sent, its just that the SSID element is left blank.I might suggest if you do lead with more than 6 SSIDs you need to fit your cells with your PHY rates. By this I mean turning off 1 2 and 5.5 PHY rates.

You may be killing your network and not realizing it ..

Thanks for supporting the rating system!

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"Satisfaction does not come from knowing the solution, it comes from knowing why." - Rosalind Franklin

[isoffice1]

Hi George,

Much obliged for your additional post, I will bear that in mind.

many thanks again,

JP

[Scott Fella · Accepted solution]

Do listen to what George posted. I try to keep SSID's down to a max of 4 if possible. I just don't see a reason to have soo many.

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[isoffice1]

Hi Scott,

Thank you for the post. We will be actioning George's recommendations when we deploy our new wireless network (hopefully within the next 12-16 weeks). The number of SSIDs has crept up over the last few years due to the wide range of users that access our wireless network. My fault really, I didn't realise there could potentially be issues with a high number of SSIDs being broadcast. Our new deployment will have a much lower number of SSIDs.

Many thanks,

JP

[Scott Fella]

You can probably condense the number of AP's by looking at what resources on he network they have access to. If you are not filtering or have acls in place, it doesn't make a difference if all the devices share the same SSID. So take a look at that and then take a look at the encryption the devices support. Most of the time you would have one SSID or voice, data and guest.

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