05-29-2023 02:35 AM
Hi,
Some schools are planning to start doing digital exams and assessments (studens will do the exam on a PC or a tablet with WiFi connection).
Some schools will have about 100 students doing the exam at the same time.
One classroom will have about 20 students.
Apps that will be used for this purpose demand at least 500 kbit/s for download and 100 Kbit/s for upload per user.
You who were involved in such projects, how did you do about coverage, cell boundary, data rates, etc. You know this will be used for an exam, so a problem of any kind will be disruptive!!!
What else should I think of when planning this?
What about LAN and WAN speed. If the AP is connected to 100 Mb port should that work or it is a must to upgrade to 1 Gb.
If all my switches are 1Gb but my WAN connection is 100Mb would that be a problem ?
Sure there are many other questions that need to be answered, so any help is appreciated.
05-29-2023 02:42 AM - edited 05-29-2023 05:57 AM
@Moudar wrote:
Some schools will have about 100 students doing the exam at the same time.
One classroom will have about 20 students.
100 students??? Is that all???
LOL.
We have been doing simultaneous on-line school exams for the last three years. Size is >23k >40k per day.
Challenge 1: Is the back-end capable of hosting 23k >40k simultaneous login
Challenge 2: Is the laptop used have the latest wireless NIC drivers?
Challenge 3: Did anyone test the wireless NIC drivers?
Challenge 4: Did anyone "stress test" the AP?
@Moudar wrote:
You who were involved in such projects, how did you do about coverage, cell boundary, data rates, etc. You know this will be used for an exam, so a problem of any kind will be disruptive!!!
Each classrooms have an AP. If anyone is going to complain that the classrooms do not have enough WiFi coverage, I recommend to have the complainant's head re-examined.
05-29-2023 03:07 AM
The students number is small because this is a small county with small number of schools and studens.
What data rates do you have as disabled, supported and mandatory 5GHz and planning to disable 2,4GHz? Do you use a special data rates for APs that are used for exams? My idea is to disbable 18 and make 24 mandatory (5GHz) on APs that will be used on the exam. Should that be giving a better airtime for all.
I did not do any test because this project is starting and there is no many APs in place to test.
Your recommendation is 1 AP in every classroom?
What about switch and WAN infrastructure?
Do you use 802.11ac, 802.11ax. Some old APs (2702) will be moved inside classrooms for the exams or should we buy new ax APs??
05-29-2023 03:29 AM - edited 05-29-2023 03:34 AM
@Moudar wrote:
What data rates do you have as disabled, supported and mandatory 5GHz and planning to disable 2,4GHz? Do you use a special data rates for APs that are used for exams? My idea is to disbable 18 and make 24 mandatory (5GHz) on APs that will be used on the exam. Should that be giving a better airtime for all.
We do not make any "special" configuration just for this event. Our data rates is the same throughout any other day.
100 simultaneous login and data traffic is nothing to what we have. The biggest obstacle we have are the backends because the vendor hosting the on-line portal could not survive >10k simultaneous login and simultaneous data traffic.
The next challenge we recently discovered is bug affecting Intel-based wireless NIC to our Chromebook fleet. We had to downgrade our authentication to PSK to stop the CB from constantly disconnecting.
@Moudar wrote:
Your recommendation is 1 AP in every classroom?
We have deployed 1 AP per classroom since 2013. The team manages about >8k APs and >100 (school) sites. Each school has a pair of 10 Gbps connection back to the core via dark fibre.
No one could accuse our organization of "not enough bandwidth". We even had Microsoft ask us if we could throttle down the speed our link to them. We laughed. Hard.
@Moudar wrote:
Do you use 802.11ac, 802.11ax. Some old APs (2702) will be moved inside classrooms for the exams or should we buy new ax APs??
No one is stupid to enable 802.11ac when there is no such thing as an affordable wireless client that can really process 802.11ac rates. 802.11n (40 Mhz channel bond) is more than enough.
05-29-2023 04:19 AM
Have you had any problems 2800 model AP? clients loose connection or like problems.
What about AP power. If classrooms are next to each other with every room having its own AP. Do you let TPC decide or do you do that manually? What TPC settings do you use?
05-29-2023 04:48 AM - edited 05-30-2023 04:30 PM
@Moudar wrote:
|Have you had any problems 2800 model AP? clients loose connection or like problems.
Funny you should ask. 2800/3800/4800/1560/IW6300 has a hardware "bug" which is centered around the MARVAL wireless chipset. The answer to the issue is "replace the affected APs with Catalyst 9k or 2700/3700" because Cisco may not be willing to fix the bug (too complicated when it is caused by a design fault of the wireless NIC and there is no workaround).
Take a look at CSCwa73245, for example. It says the bug is fixed in 8.10.171.0 and I am currently using 8.10.171.0 and I can assure anyone our 4800 are still dropping RTP traffic like crazy.
EDIT: Workaround is to move the APs, from AeroOS, to IOS-XE controller.
I have compiled a list of Bug IDs (LIST) which are affecting ONLY 2800/3800/4800/1560/IW6300.
@Moudar wrote:
What about AP power. If classrooms are next to each other with every room having its own AP. Do you let TPC decide or do you do that manually? What TPC settings do you use?
I hate micro-managing stuff like TPC or DCA. I let the controllers do it's work.
05-30-2023 03:12 PM
Is the classroom with 20 students the largest? If so, even the 2702 should be fine for this job, but do plan to replace them with 9100 series since they're EoL soon. We haven't had problems in regular classrooms taking online exams, even in rooms that still had 3500s and 2600s. Larger rooms over 150 or so clients and several APs are a different story with different design considerations, for others reading.
If buying new APs, I like to go with the latest generation if only to get more life out of them before they're EoL. Few clients support 6 GHz now (only a Samsung phone, a MacBook Pro, and a Dell Latitude 7430 that I know of), but the APs will be around longer then today's smart phones will. But, 6E APs necessitate 9800 series controllers and DNA licensing (if you don't have those already).
In most cases, I agree with Leo, let the controllers do the work for TPC and DCA. (Again, larger rooms, different story.) 12Mbps minimum rates for both bands worked fine for us, but I'm moving towards 24Mbps minimum. Others go even higher. That should be done in high-density environments where there are multiple APs in a room, anyway.
I would be careful with that 100Mb WAN link. Rough math says you'd be using half of your WAN link just doing exams, not counting non-exam traffic, but not everyone will be using max throughput simultaneously. Maybe users would normally be doing other online activities and the net throughput wouldn't increase over a normal class.
What is your typical throughput during the day, and how much will this exam be adding to it? Do you have graphing software to monitor traffic on the WAN link, the switch uplinks, and the AP downlinks at fairly high frequency to compare a normal class to an exam class? To get this data, and to verify user experience, I recommend doing a practice exam if a teacher is willing.
05-31-2023 03:23 AM
There will be no more than 20 students in a class room when it comes to digital exams.
I was asking about AP models because i need to buy new APs for this purpose. We have already replaced all our 2600 APs with 9120 APs. But now Cisco have the 916x APs. We have 5520 WLC which does not support 916x APs. So It will be a big move if we decide to use the 916x APs.
What is the expected EoL of 9120 APs?
Why would you move to 24Mbps minimum?
The exam demand at minimum 500kbit/s download and 100kbit/s upload per student.
We can not do a prcatice test just yet because we don't have the application used yet.
How do you do a stress test and what do you check when you do it?
05-31-2023 03:36 AM
@Moudar wrote:
Can we create a trunk port between 3750 switch to 9300 switch? Will it work?
Tell the vendor you want to do a stress test. If they refuse, then expect the test to fail.
05-31-2023 08:13 AM
No EoL for 9120s, so you'll get at least 5 years out of them. Their replacements (9166) just came out last year. The bigger EoL concern would be the 5520 WLC and AireOS. See: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/wireless/5520-wireless-controller/eos-eol-notice-c51-744430.html
Software end of support was this past January. They did release an update, 8.10.185.0, since then, which is the recommended version. But don't count on any more bugs getting fixed unless it's a security issue.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to get some 9120s. When the 5520 is EoL, they may still be supported on the 9800 WLC once you're ready to migrate to that. If you're looking for cost savings, consider APs with part numbers ending with -RF. These are Cisco refurbished and are significantly cheaper, but not always available these days (first-come, first-serve basis for the vendor).
Higher date rates mean less channel utilization, which increases performance. It also shrinks cell sizes to help clients connect to the AP closest to them rather than stay connected to the AP down the hallway for example. At the 24Mb minimum rate, you get a theoretical max of 12Mb actual throughput -- less in practice, about the best a DSL connection can do for comparison. IMO, that's the bottom end of a usable connection for typical online activities these days, anyway. Legacy and IoT devices (door locks and security cameras come to mind) might be fine with and even rely on lower rates, so your mileage may vary.
06-11-2023 01:24 PM
Wow, you mean to make digital exams and assessments on a regular basis? I know it was widely spread during the covid pandemic. Apparently, this practice has successfully taken root in many educational institutions, because it has justified its effectiveness. I accidentally came across this thread while looking for information about one of the Cisco courses. Certain manipulations with a computer are challenging for me, and I know that the Cisco Academy once had a Computer Engineer course. For such classes in college, I always ordered homework from Edubirdie because I couldn't do it myself. Since I found the Edubirdie website https://edubirdie.org/edubirdie-legit/ and read the information on the blog that the service is legit, I have often used their services. However, now I need computer skills for work, so I am looking for an opportunity to take a course (not corporate).
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