Recommended WLAN Configurations

folkv · ‎10-31-2007

Recently, we had a vendor come into our organization to implement a new wireless cart for nurses and they recommended we change our wireless config in the building that these carts are going in, due to their wireless carts not working properly. Up until now we have not had any issues with any type of client on our WLAN. We've built our WLAN on Cisco's best practices. But, this vendor is telling us things that contradict what Cisco says. The vendor had us change the following...

1. We turned RRM off. (They said AutoRF is a immature feature in Cisco's current feature set)

2. We Hard-coded all AP's with channel/power settings.

3. They told us using 802.11a was not a strategic move and to use b/g. (they were using a card that didn't support a)

4. Then they said turn off RF Grouping.

These are the 4 things that they recommended, we were wondering what everyones thoughts were on this vendor's recommendations?

ericgarnel · ‎10-31-2007

OK, so everything else but the carts worked fine with the Cisco best practices.

Now, after making the changes that they requested, how do the carts and other wireless devices perform? That would indicate what works best in YOUR environment - or not.

If there is no improvement, perhaps you should go back to the best practices model, at least it would make wireless network administration a whole lot easier

folkv · ‎10-31-2007

The vendor's carts are still having issues, so they have been trying different pcmcia cards and clients to see if that would fix the issue. As far as all of our other wireless devices go, they have all been working the same or better. The only thing we saw as being an issue were the number of AP's, so we turned a few off. We would also like to go back to using RRM to avoid the network administration on 500 AP's.

ericgarnel · ‎10-31-2007

How about turning RRM back on, but leave those APs off and see what happens.

I am typically gun shy when a vendor starts making recommendations about another vendor's product and/or configuration.