topic RE: Band Steering without Load Groups? in ExtremeWireless (Identifi)

Band Steering without Load Groups?

Tony1 — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 17:29:00 GMT

Hi guys

Is it possible to activate Band Steering (moving clients to 5 GHz band) without Load groups?
The customer request is to enable this feature on all access points. Due to huge number of APs and effort needed to create spearate Load groups - my idea is to just enable it globally on the WLC or per AP.

RE: Band Steering without Load Groups?

Ronald_Dvorak — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 17:32:00 GMT

Hi Tony,

you need to use the load groups to configure band steering.

https://gtacknowledge.extremenetworks.com/articles/How_To/How-to-set-up-a-Band-Preference-Group-Band...

-Ron

RE: Band Steering without Load Groups?

Tony1 — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 17:39:00 GMT

Hi Ron,

thanks for the fast reply.

But I don't undestand the technical background why it is necessary to group the APs. From my perspective there is no interaction between neighboring APs needed, when they should just ignore some probes or association requests on the Radio2.

RE: Band Steering without Load Groups?

Ronald_Dvorak — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 17:58:00 GMT

Tony,
it's just a assumption but I think it's working this way to give the administrator of the WLAN controller more options to configure it.

I unterstand that in your case your customer want to have it enabled on all APs for every SSID (global enable) but on the other hand a lot more customers want to have it only on certain APs & SSIDs so a global enable of the function would be not working for this scenario,

But that's just my interpretation of the configiration option.

So let's wait for a Extreme employee to give some input - it's 9am already so after the first coffee I'm pretty sure that someone will respond to the post 🙂

-Ron

RE: Band Steering without Load Groups?

Doug — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 19:05:00 GMT

Ron/Tony,

I'm caffeinated up and ready to go. Load Groups is just the name of the higher level group. Under that is :

Client Balancing
Radio Preference

Radio preference can be enabled on all access points for all WLAN-Services.

RE: Band Steering without Load Groups?

Ronald_Dvorak — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 19:49:00 GMT

Is there no restiction of max 32 APs per load group or is that only for client balancing load groups?

RE: Band Steering without Load Groups?

Doug — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 19:51:00 GMT

No restrictions for band preference.

RE: Band Steering without Load Groups?

Tony1 — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 12:58:00 GMT

Thanks for the fast replys.

But I think it's not really usable for all APs. Due to the fact that this option cannot be enabled globally and I have to add every single AP to the Radio Preference Group and activate it per SSID. That would mean on a 5210 Controller I have to manually select 1000 APs add them to the group and afterwards select two or more SSIDs -- that is a lot of work (mouseclicks).

And then every new AP must be manually added again.

RE: Band Steering without Load Groups?

Doug — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 17:53:00 GMT

I will open up a C4 product enhancement request for you Tony.

Regards,

Doug

RE: Band Steering without Load Groups?

Tony1 — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 17:53:00 GMT

thank you!

RE: Band Steering without Load Groups?

Doug — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 17:53:00 GMT

No problem, C4 submitted.

RE: Band Steering without Load Groups?

John_Romero — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 21:50:00 GMT

I agree, I wish they would have made the controller so you can use the Shift key to choose multiple AP's and SSID's Can you add that to the C4 Doug Hyde?

RE: Band Steering without Load Groups?

Doug — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 21:50:00 GMT

Just run this past your AE and SE, they can submit a product enhancement on your behalf.

Regards,
Doug