Tips for Managing High Density Networks
Wireless networks are tricky business. As tough as you think keeping a basic home or office network is, imagine how complicated proper maintenance of a high density network is. It’s incredibly important to understand which applications will be used and how much bandwidth each application will use in regards to throughput per user. Aside from knowing the types of applications that will be used on your network, bandwidth requirements range depending on the amount of expected users on the network. With an increase in network users, throughput per user decreases resulting in a slower transmission rate.
There are a number of recommendations for handling the high density wireless networks. Take a look below to see what you can do for the best wireless deployment, planning, and design practices for high density environments.
- By turning up the power to the access point, it can cause additional co-channel and adjacent-channel interference. It’s recommended that adding a third access point while setting the output to one-half or one quarter for the 2.4GHz access point and to one half for the 5 GHz access point.
- Using dual band concurrent access points is a great way to maximize available throughput for users. Always remember to enable both radios.
- Before your live deployment, you should fully load the network to ensure the network’s ability to handle the amount of traffic generated by a BYOD implementation.
- Designing access point placement in high density areas in a way that every client is always able to see a few access points at a time. If a couple access points are ever overloaded, it’s possible for a client to be load balanced towards another access point with no negative impact on the user.
- Consider adjusting the threshold on the access point to effectively utilize over the air resources, ensuring that you load balance the traffic to all of the access points that can be seen by network users.
- If you’re looking to deploy a wireless network in a school, consider it best practice to limit yourself to one access point per classroom.
- Identifying High Density Areas – You should start the design process by using a live RF tool like an AirMagnet planner to identify areas of high density
- You should take the time to make sure that your wired network is providing the sufficient bandwidth in order to support higher throughput access points by deploying Power of Ethernet
- By conducting a physical site survey, you’re able to identify and troubleshoot any potential forms of interference from sources related to your wi-fi.