Do I need to change any settings in the Hive Manager or AP's to increase speed after we have bumped up our bandwidth?

[AnonymousM]

We increased our district speed last year from 100 Mbps to 1GB. I was just wondering if there is any setting in the Hive Manager or AP's that needs to be changed? We aren't getting very good speeds from our WIFI network. And some of the clients are wanting to connect to AP's far away instead of the one that's in their room. 

[bpowers]

Nikki,

You have to have at a minimum 1 data rate set as basic. The basic data rates are rates that must be supported by the client to associate/authenticate to the AP. The lowest of the basic rates (if multiple are set) is what the beacon frames are transmitted at (the SSIDs that you see in the air). So as you change that basic rate to a higher rate, the distance that SSID is able to be heard shrinks and by nature the serviceable area of the APs RF footprint. This is one way to keep devices off of distant APs.

So if you currently have 11 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz side and 12 Mbps on the 5 GHz side set as basic, you can set the next rate up. I actually would leave them at 12 Mbps and not go up any higher as a good rule of thumb and try to figure out why devices aren't roaming to nearby APs. The 6, 12, 24 Mbps data rates are by the 802.11 standard to be used as basic rates as they all support different modulation methods. Most all vendors allow setting any rate as basic/mandatory though, so it can and should still work, but back in the past, some devices didn't operate well if a non-standard (6,12,24) data rate was set as basic.

Roaming is a decision that is almost exclusively done by the client device. So if it joins a far away AP, it must have done it for a reason. Congestion, retries, errors, etc. on it's current AP are possible reasons. Unfortunately, determining this can be very challenging. The Aerohive events/alarms might shed some light as to why they moved. If you have load balancing enabled, that too can cause clients to get moved to possibly less than ideal APs.

[AnonymousM]

Ok, so I already have 1-9 on the 2.4 set to N/A, and 6&9 on the 5GHz. This part I’m confused about “I’d recommend turning the next one or two rates to N/A”
Do you mean like 11 on the 2.4 is on basic and 12 on the 5GHz is on basic. Do you mean turn them to N/A?? Here’s a screenshot of my current settings



Nikki Williams
Media and Technology Department
411 W. Poplar St.
Harrisburg, IL. 62946
618-253-7637 ext. 1013

[samantha_lynn]

Absolutely, the best settings to adjust for that would be to disable the lower data rates in the SSID settings. This will require a stronger connection between the AP and the client device, which means devices will be connecting to APs nearer to them with a stronger signal.

You can find the data rates by going to Configuration> Open the Network Policy> Open the SSID> Expand the Radio and Rates section below the Optional Settings section header. If all the rates currently say "Basic" or "Optional" I would start by turning 1-9 to N/A for the 2.4GHz settings, and 6&9 to N/A for the 5GHz settings, leaving the MCS rates alone. If some are already set to N/A, I'd recommend turning the next one or two rates to N/A, pushing out a configuration update, and then waiting about an hour to see if you see any improvements.

The only downside to disabling some data rates is that if we go too far we'll start rejecting healthy connections so doing it a couple at a time is a good way to find the right balance.

[AnonymousM]

Hi Sam! It's me again. 

I have a question. I put the radio frequency settings that you recommended in one of our schools last year and things have been working pretty good. However, lately at one of our schools devices are grabbing from further away access points than they should causing them to have weak signals and kicking off eventually or just freezing or going really slow. Can I narrow down those setting a little more to help ensure that they grab the closest access point to them? Thank you!