RTS/CTS ?

[chriskgtmc]

Has anyone tried lowering this parameter? And if so, did it help? I'm considering lowering it on nodes that are on the edge and that have a lot of radio retries. Does anyone have an opinion on this?

[beth-martin]

The Aironet wireless always uses RTS/CTS. Lowering the Ready To Send (RTS) threshold just makes it so the bridge transmits the RTS packet at a lower packet size. It can make a difference when a client is downloading, although changing this setting on the bridge will not make a difference on uploads as the client can control their RTS threshold. The threshold logically will decrease because the RTS packet is being sent more often, creating more network chatter.

[ccie]

Sorry, but your answer is completely wrong. RTS/CTS is a protection mechanism, used in 802.11 and 802.11b for hidden nodes, and used in 802.11g for both hidden nodes and OFDM/DSSS co-located environments. RTS stands for Request to Send, and the RTS frame is always 20 bytes. It is, by default, disabled on all wireless devices, including Cisco Aironet. It is enabled manually by setting a threshold on an infrastructure device like an AP or Bridge, or on a client device in the mfr's utilities. It can be enabled automatically by the access point in an 802.11g environment when a Non-ERP (802.11 or 802.11b) client associates to the 802.11g (ERP) access point. This is done with the Use_Protection bit in the ERP Information Element in the beacon. You guys need to take a CWAP class - see www.cwnp.com