Options for 802.11ax radio profile

[helpdesk48]

I have a question about two options for the AX radio profile on HiveManager 12.8.2.2.

"Radio Load Balancing", this will distribute clients between the two radio's in Dual-5GHz mode. Should this be enabled or will the load-balancing between radio's work fine it this is disabled? I believe this depends on the fact if a client sees the first beacon from radio A or radio B, right?

"Enable Downlink OFDMA", why is this option greyed-out? Isn't this enabled by default in the 802.11ax protocol?

[SamPirok]

Hi Daniel, the OFDMA feature is enabled for me in my lab, are you looking at an ax Radio Profile? 

OFDMA can take a Wi-Fi channel and divide it into smaller frequency allocations (known as resource units (RUs)). This enables an AP to communicate with multiple clients simultaneously by assigning them to specific RUs. OFDMA can choose to either allocate the entire channel to a single client or sub-divide, depending on current level of traffic. However this can only be done with the latest 802.11ax devices. 

[daniel1]

@Sam Pirok

Do you know more about this “Enable Downlink OFDMA” option? It’s still greyed out in latest IQVA for our AP650 and no word of it in the online help.

Just found this: https://extremeportal.force.com/ExtrArticleDetail?n=000047283

Does this mean, that it’ll be enabled in a future firmware update for AP650?

[samantha_lynn]

Thanks for keeping me honest Brian, much appreciated! You are correct, I was talking about a different feature, my apologies. If the 650 has both radios set to 5GHz, it would be good to have this setting on so the client load is evenly split between both radios on the AP. If one radio is using 2.4GHz, then this feature will not help, but we could use Band Steering settings to help even the client load out in that case.

I will have to dig in to the OFDMA feature a bit more, but I'll get back to you as soon as I know more.

[helpdesk48]

Thank you Sam & Brian,

Thanks for testing the Enable Downlink OFDMA feature. Is it possible for you to further ask/investigate the purpose of this feature?

As for the Radio Load Balancing, this applies to our end customers' AP650's. They will mount one in the center of a classroom. Would it be useful to activate this feature?

[AnonymousM]

Sam, I believe your confusing AP/Client load balancing for radio load balancing. AP load balancing typically falls within your recommendations. Radio load balancing was implemented to ensure that on an AP with both radios running on the 5 GHz band that a single AP did not have all of the clients connected to it while the other radio had little to no users.

Radio Load Balancing: Distribute 5-GHz wireless clients evenly across the two radios when they are in dual-5G mode when an SSID is available on both radios.

Number of Connection Attempts: Enter between 1 and 10 connection attempts per client before the AP stops attempting to move the client to another 5-GHz radio. Default is 5 attempts.

As for the OFDMA, I do not have an answer as to why that box is not selectable. Even creating a brand new Radio Policy not applied to any hardware you cannot select that checkbox.