topic What's the best way to measure or prove signal degradation due to hotspots or outside interference in a school? in Aerohive Migrated Content

What's the best way to measure or prove signal degradation due to hotspots or outside interference in a school?

dtopo — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 22:53:57 GMT

Hello all...looking to pick some brains about how to deal with hotspots and interference throughout our school campus. We know our students are using hotspots , but my first question is....is the signal from these hotspots significantly interfering with our campus Aerohive infrastructure to the point of degrading it? It seems we are having more issues- slower connections, longer authentication times etc, but what I can't prove is, are the increase in hotspots and rogue SSIDs attributing to our issues. I'd love suggestions on how people deal with this situation, esp in a private school setting. Can anyone suggest a directional antenna software combo that would make it easier to locate these hotspots besides what I'm using now, which is a basic laptop with some free wifi scanners on it. I'd also be interested in a tool to measure interference and noise from sources outside the wifi bands. Again, to try to pin down what might be causing our perceived signal degradation. Look forward to your responses - thanks in advance!

Re: What's the best way to measure or prove signal degradation due to hotspots or outside interference in a school?

samantha_lynn — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 23:14:43 GMT

We have some guides that can help you mitigate interference in general, depending on which HiveManager platform you are using:

ExtremeCloud IQ (formerly HiveManager NG): https://thehivecommunity.aerohive.com/s/article/Radio-Frequency-Interference-NG

HiveManager Classic: https://thehivecommunity.aerohive.com/s/article/Radio-Frequency-Interference-Troubleshooting

This guide will walk you through how to determine which HiveManager you are using, for reference: https://thehivecommunity.aerohive.com/s/article/Which-HiveManager-Platform-am-I-using

The first command the guide discusses in "show acsp neighbor". This will show you neighboring signals and you can determine if they are too loud. The guide goes in to more detail on how to read this output but in general if you see a signal that has a RSSI signal of -59-0, that device is causing interference on your network. We want to see the RSSI value between -75 and -100 ideally, anying in the -50s and up is an issue.

That output also gives you the BSSID of the signal, which will match the MAC address of the device creating that signal until the last two characters (the last two characters are different from the devices MAC address to indicate different interfaces on the same device). You could use your wireless scanner to find the device that matches the BSSID and then either disable the signal or lower the broadcast power on that device so there isn't so much signal overlap.

Re: What's the best way to measure or prove signal degradation due to hotspots or outside interference in a school?

dtopo — Sat, 16 Nov 2019 03:07:26 GMT

All helpful Sam!....thank you! I was wondering about the outside interference too- that which is not in a "wifi band". We have a new building (school) going up mere feet away (30-40 ft) from the problem area in question- with 3 floors of metal and steel all around, and heavy machinerywelding going on. Have you ever experienced issues in an environment with close proximity to construction going on ?

Re: What's the best way to measure or prove signal degradation due to hotspots or outside interference in a school?

samantha_lynn — Sat, 16 Nov 2019 03:24:20 GMT

You can look at the spectrum analysis, that will show you signal from non-wifi devices as well (like microwaves, smart printers, IoT devices etc).

If you're using ExtremeCloud IQ, you'll want to go to Manage> Check the box next to the AP> Utilities> Spectrum Intelligence.

If you're using HiveManager Classic you'll want to go to Monitor> Check the box next to the AP> utilities> Spectrum analysis.

Unfortunately there isn't much we can do settings wise that would help with non-Aerohive signals outside of your network, other than adjusting your own AP power to see if we can reduce signal overlap a bit. Near by construction won't hurt too much so long as your signal doesn't have to move through the construction site to reach the client devices.

Re: What's the best way to measure or prove signal degradation due to hotspots or outside interference in a school?

dtopo — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 22:35:44 GMT

Again ,,,thanks Sam ...I'll dive into that to get familiar with what I'm looking at. Just one more question .....in reference to interference....because we are certainly seeing high retries and crc on both radios in spots. Can loud signal sourced from EITHER the same channels
adios, or DIFFERENT radioschannels negatively effect any of the other the other channels? For example, can strong signal from a 5Ghz hotspot, not necessarily on the same channel as one of our APs, impact that particular AP? Or would it only effect it if they are both on the same channel. The result of our signal problems have been failed authentications, due to high retries and crc I'm guessing, at certain times of the day.

2019-11-15 10:36:25 Local6.Error 10.2.20.76 radiusd[2508]: rlm_eap: No EAP session matching the State variable.

2019-11-15 10:36:25 Local6.Warning 10.2.20.76 radiusd[2508]: aaa: RADIUS: The RADIUS server rejected user 'markpolo' through the NAS at 10.2.20.38.

Re: What's the best way to measure or prove signal degradation due to hotspots or outside interference in a school?

samantha_lynn — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 03:29:28 GMT

The traffic may be using different channels but you're still sharing the same air space so it will still cause interference.

Re: What's the best way to measure or prove signal degradation due to hotspots or outside interference in a school?

bfrappier — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 22:51:45 GMT

What does this do to Aerohive APs that have dual radios, in that case? Do they interfere with each other?