Factors to Consider for High Density Wi-Fi Deployments

1. Factors to Consider for High Density Wi-Fi Deployments You may think that for high density deployments, it’s best to increase the number of access point in order to cater to more Wi-Fi users who are congregated within a small area. But that may not always be the best thing to do. Wireless interference is a major issue all the more pronounced with high density Wi-Fi deployments. Even more AP’s need to be used, administrators may try to reduce the transmitted power of each AP so that their signals don’t interfere with neighboring AP’s. But that reduces the available bandwidth for the intended users. Hence, planning Wi-Fi coverage for high density area is complex. There are some factors that you need to consider while you are designing Wi-Fi networks in areas with higher user identity: 5GHz band is better than 2.4 GHz band for the dense AP deployments, as it provides more non-overlapping channels and higher channels reuse factor. Fortunately, many newer Wi-Fi clients are dual-band enabled or 5GHz only. But there will be older 2.4GHz clients to deal with. Site survey estimation of number of users per AP, heat maps, encryption used or not bandwidth required for each application and each user are all important factors to consider during the planning stage. It may be a good idea to consider the 70-80% peak device connectivity factor and 30% of that number not being idle at any given time, while designing.

2. Ideally, access points should be placed as close as possible to users. However, consider placing AP’s in non-line of sight locations with respect to each other. Using narrow beam directional antenna for an access points is better than the using Omni-directional antenna because there is higher signal gain and lower interference. A human body attenuates RF signals. Human reduce the transmit power of the power of the AP’s and hence the limit coverage. This minimizes interference. So, AP’s can be deliberately placed under the seats etc. in order to limit the RF coverage in dense areas. While the client load balancing – a feature that distributes users across access points for better performance – is fine, administrators could look at turning off this feature as background scanning results in some capacity loss besides in a dense environment, chances of most users connecting to the same AP is less. While allowing only Wi-Fi devices that support the wider channels is a good idea but there will be old devices that would not be able to connect and it will create problem for you only. So, choose your bandwidth wisely. Limiting the maximum speed with which each user can associate with an AP will prevent a few clients from hogging all the bandwidth. The number of devices that can connect to an AP could be set to the maximum value supported by the AP. By default this may be lower.

3. Enabling Encryption is a good idea from the security stand point, but it decreases performance. So, using encryption selectively, e.g. for internal network or financial transactions may be better than enabling it for everyone. Intrusion detection a feature available with many controllers might put more stain on the processing resources. So, consider switching it off in high density areas. Broad cast traffic could be allowed selectively based on their critically. For example, ARP broadcast should be allowed while bonjour broadcasts could be disallowed. For more details please go through the link here: https://www.gbic-shop.de https://www.cbo-it.de