The document discusses best practices for migrating to 802.11ac Wi-Fi networks. It notes that there are now on average 3 devices per user using more applications and traffic. 802.11ac provides faster speeds through wider channels, better modulation, and more spatial streams. Key aspects of 802.11ac covered include available channels and data rates possible for different client types and channel widths. Coverage examples and considerations for different modulation coding schemes are also presented. Potential pros and cons of 802.11ac are briefly discussed as well as upcoming developments like wave 2 and 802.11ad.
Quick slide covering the changing use of client devices
What you really need here is the minimum acceptable throughput that the application will require
-It is advisable to measure this yourself on multiple platforms - manufacturer/supplier numbers are good - but Trust and Verify is always a better career bet.
11ac is an extension of 11n. Those of you who were around for the 11n roll out will notice a lot of déjà vu. The big difference with 11ac is that end users care about wireless speeds now. Client devices are differentiating themselves with 11ac support (HTC One, Samsung GS4, MacBook Air)
FCC: US, Australia Canada, Colombia, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan (all core countries), and more
Orange = cannot be used due to doplar weather radar interference
Blue = added 144 which opened a 20, 40 and 80 mhz channel
Pattern = FCC DFS required
FCC has talked about adding additional channels but there is no official word on that yet. Unknown is new hardware will be required because we don’t know what the DFS requirements will be.
Most customers will deploy 80 MHz channels. There is a dynamic per packet channel width decision made in 11ac. Some of that was standard in 11n but the sensitivity was too low (-62) and it has been increased to -72 and seems to work now.
High density deployments and special cases may still want 20 or 40 mhz channels depending on utilization and use case.
ETSI: EU, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, UAE (all core countries), and more
Japan: similar restrictions, different power limits, DFS details
Pattern = ETSI DFS required
FCC: US, Australia Canada, Colombia, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan (all core countries), and more
Orange = cannot be used due to doplar weather radar interference
Blue = added 144 which opened a 20, 40 and 80 mhz channel
Pattern = FCC DFS required
FCC has talked about adding additional channels but there is no official word on that yet. Unknown is new hardware will be required because we don’t know what the DFS requirements will be.
Most customers will deploy 80 MHz channels. There is a dynamic per packet channel width decision made in 11ac. Some of that was standard in 11n but the sensitivity was too low (-62) and it has been increased to -72 and seems to work now.
High density deployments and special cases may still want 20 or 40 mhz channels depending on utilization and use case.
In 802.11ac the interference detection threshold has also improved. Wi-Fi AP’s use interference detection to reduce overlap and collisions with other AP’s operating on secondary channels.
The standard defines a sensitivity threshold for the signal strength on the secondary channel that an AP must measure in order to determine if that secondary channel is busy.
802.11n uses -62 dBm as the sensitivity threshold for interfering 802.11n signals
802.11ac improved this to -72 dBm, which means that 802.11ac networks have improved sensitivity towards collision avoidance and overlap detection.
Dynamic bandwidth management and increased sensitivity of the clear channel assessment (CCA) threshold are the features that improve the performance of 802.11ac
2.4 ghz will mostly remain 20 mhz 11n so those speeds will still be on the network
5 ghz will transition to 80 mhz in most cases from the 40 mhz.
Single stream smart phones see some of the largest benefits from 11ac going from 72.2 mhz (2.4 ghz) to 433. Many phones are making the switch from 2.4 to 5 as part of the 11ac migration.
Single 11ac client, 5GHz radio 1 3x3 11ac VHT80 N/A
TCP UP/Down, UDP UP/Down
d-tunnel 825 870, 920 930
tunnel 650 672, 800 776
bridge 825 865, 920 945
Same range for rates that also exist in 11n, add 2 more rates in core
Note that coverage areas may expand using 11ac TxBF
Rates are ~doubled, but range is slightly reduced (-3dB, 70%)
Signal level: assumes a site survey is done with an AP transmitting at +17dBm
2.4 ghz will mostly remain 20 mhz 11n so those speeds will still be on the network
5 ghz will transition to 80 mhz in most cases from the 40 mhz.
Single stream smart phones see some of the largest benefits from 11ac going from 72.2 mhz (2.4 ghz) to 433. Many phones are making the switch from 2.4 to 5 as part of the 11ac migration. Samsung s4 has seen 250 mbps downstream in testing
Single 11ac client, 5GHz radio 1 3x3 11ac VHT80 N/A
The AP-110 Series and AP-220 series are our latest generation of Wi-Fi products and both have RF enhancements that include cellular interference mitigation as some of the LTE cellular bands can interfere with 2.4GHz transmissions on the 11n radio.
You should lead with the AP-220 Series for high performance and density, upselling your customers from the AP-130 to AP-220.
For cost-sensitive customers or those who don’t need the best performance and future-proofing, lead with the AP-110 Series.
AP-103
Price $395
AP-224/225
3x3:3 Dual Radio
5GHz 11ac: up to 1.3Gbps
2.4GHz 11n: up to 450Mbps
2x GE link aggregation
Enabling >1Gbps throughput
Full 802.11ac functionality with standard 802.3af PoE
802.11ac Beamforming
TurboQAM: proprietary solution to support 11ac 256-QAM modulation in 2.4GHz, potentially offering 33% throughput increase
802.3af POE:
No USB
No second Ethernet port
1x3:1ss 2.4GHz radio
50 cm from das
1-2 from directional base station
Poe redundancy – different switches
Lag can be enabled – same switch
For traffic more than a gig
Ha-lite is supported with lag
If you are using tunnel enable AMSDU
Use d-tunnel – if you want 11w, D-DMO
Other tunnel -
Stickiness between 11n and 11ac – clientmatch should help
Enterprise configs:
For open office: where AP’s that can hear each other
Peaks and lobes for rx busy – take the utilization at slow times, that tells you if its CCI or users consuming the bandwidth
Too many SSIDs, APs are too close
Square, twitter, facebook etc.
For closed offices: defaults config
Microsoft etc.
For universities – default power as APs might not hear each other well
Radio that transmit voice, match the device characteristics – especially hospitals
Outdoor/PFE – special ping tiger team
Issues with 80 MHz, reduce the variables, go to 40 MHz, VHT is still turned on – all enterprises ran into issues – connectivity, discoonnect, performance
CSR – part of 6.3.1.3, without CSR cap power to avoid interference, for deployments less than 40 feet or go to 20 MHz channels, or go to DFS channels on 40 MHz
Enterprise configs:
For open office: where AP’s that can hear each other
Peaks and lobes for rx busy – take the utilization at slow times, that tells you if its CCI or users consuming the bandwidth
Too many SSIDs, APs are too close
Square, twitter, facebook etc.
For closed offices: defaults config
Microsoft etc.
For universities – default power as APs might not hear each other well
Radio that transmit voice, match the device characteristics – especially hospitals
Outdoor/PFE – special ping tiger team
Issues with 80 MHz, reduce the variables, go to 40 MHz, VHT is still turned on – all enterprises ran into issues – connectivity, discoonnect, performance
CSR – part of 6.3.1.3, without CSR cap power to avoid interference, for deployments less than 40 feet or go to 20 MHz channels, or go to DFS channels on 40 MHz
When it comes to performance, there is no match to Aruba’s ClientMatch technology. As you know, there are a variety of different client devices out there running on different operating system, different driver versions, even different capabilities like 802.11 a or b or g or n as well as 11ac. Not all these devices are created equal and just one poorly behaving client can bring down the performance of the whole network. The fundamental issue that on a Wi-Fi network the client device is in control. They make their own decisions on which AP to connect to, how long to stay connected to that AP and when to let go leading to the well known sticky client problem. Problem with this approach is that the Client devices have a narrow view of the network and are generally making decisions that may not be in the best interests of the overall network. ClientMatch fixes this by enabling the Wi-Fi infrastructure to make decisions on behalf of the client while keep a global network wide view in mind.
If you are talking on your cell phone while driving down the road, you are probably going through several different cell towers. As you pass the towers, your active call and your devices is being actively steered by the cell company to the best cell tower for your device. Similarly, ClientMatch enables the infrastructure to steer the devices to the best possible AP based on several different factors like device type, location of the device, signal to noise ratio in the vicinity of the device as well the load on the Access Point. You can see this in action on the animated slide here where the iPad is being steered to another AP. With ClientMatch, the goal is to improve the quality of every single connection which effectively boosts overall network performance providing users with a superior user experience.
As you see on this slide, Aruba has already been granted a patent on this technology making it unique and highly differentiated. Without ClientMatch, an 802.11ac network will operate no different than a 802.11n network and users will not experience much performance gains.
In a real world test, we observed 98% of the devices significant improvement in their Signal to noise ratio when ClientMatch was enabled on the network.
We are going to start out by looking at immediate issues on your network and move into longer term health monitoring. We are essentially triaging the network. First we are checking to make sure there are no cuts or bruises right now through the controller. Then we will move towards the 6 month physical to verify that things are continuing to run smoothly. We will be using the controller dashboard and AirWave. But these are just examples. What we are talking about holds true for any wireless network.
Broadcast vs multicast traffic
Noise: Noise Floor
Interference (%): The percentage of time of signals in that channel that could not be decoded as Wi-Fi signals.