load balancing wireless clients in a conference

[Pavel Dimow]

My organisation will be hosting big event. We expect to have a least 200+ concurent wireless clients in a single big room (I guess 50m x 20m)

My task is to cover the area with wireless. I am wondering what I can do with WLC 5508 (except proper AP placement ofc) to somehow load balance wireless clients? Keep in mind that this will be meeting like many users in one relativley small space and all will be using wireless at the same time

with light staff like web surfing mail check and so on. Does wlc 5508 can do the job at all with the latest 7.6 code?

[Scott Fella]

There is a feature called client load balancing that SHOULD NOT BE USED!!!  What you should do is lower the TX power and disable the lower data rates.... If you want to cover that room and that room only, you can set the mandatory data rate at 24, 36 or even 48mbps.  This will make your cell size smaller.  Here is an example:

Thanks,

Scott

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[Pavel Dimow]

Hello Scott,

thank you for your reply, my main concern is that let say 150 users will try to connect to two AP's while other 50 users will go to 5+ AP's given the facts that that will be big conference room (like cinema) and that AP's can be mounted on the side walls only.

[Scott Fella · Accepted solution]

The clients make the final decision in what access points they wish to connect with. Lowering the data rates and power will help alleviate clients on the far end from joining. You can always monitor this in the beginning to tweak your lowest mandatory rate and TX power. It will balance nicely... With users in that area.

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[Rasika Nayanajith]

Hi Pavel,

As scott suggested disable low data rates. Capacity would be the important factor here. You have to plan 20-30 clients per AP if you want to give decent bandwidth per user. I hope you are using 802.11n capable AP model (make sure you are using WPA2/AES & WMM enable on your WLAN)

Does wlc 5508 can do the job at all with the latest 7.6 code?

If you are using 3600/3700 series AP then there are few known issues (see below thread) with this software code. So get an engineering release of 7.6.x.x from TAC.

https://supportforums.cisco.com/message/4170252#4170252

Otherwise stick with 7.4.121.0 code which is a quiet stable software code.

HTH

Rasika

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[Pavel Dimow]

Hello Rasika,

thank you for your reply.

I am using AP1602I model. Out of curiosity how WPA2/AES & WMM helps in this situation?

[Scott Fella]

I believe Rasika is referring to higher bandwidth speed for the users.. 802.11n

I'm assuming this is for guest users and you will be using an open SSID or a guest portal page? If so, open auth is supported with 802.11n.

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[Rasika Nayanajith]

Hi Pavel,

Yes I meant if you are usnig PSK, use WAP2/AES in order to give users 802.11n speeds. If it is Open Auth that would work as well.

HTH

Rasika