Problem with MAC's moving around in School

[jan_boje]

We have about 4000 student using a Macbook Pro, Macbook Air. About 10% of those have problem when they change classroom. the Mac's is still connecting to the classroom they come from.

We have set "radio and rates" on 5.0 GHz to basic 24Mbps and up.

Our solution is to disable wireless og the client and on again.

Can we do anything to impove this in our configuration, radio profiles or ??

Our accesspoint is AP250 and AP370 with Hivemanager Classic.

Jan Boje

[jan_boje]

thanks for trying. ​when reading the Cisco paper, i would say that there is some difference. We have set "max transmit limit" to 18. Asking around the student if it got better, but the answer… meaby 

I have to find a student which have problem with the Mac and roaming. I have seen reconnect on a mac in 6 sek (wireless off and then on again) and up to 90 sek for another mac.

[samantha_lynn]

I've been asking around to see if we have any similar documentation but I haven't been able to find anything. In general, I can't see how a separate SSID for PC and MAC would help.

[jan_boje]

We have used the "best practice guide" from Aerohive. ​We have had an expert here in Denmark to look at the radioprofile and so on. He had make a good job - no problem. But still we got problem with Mac computers.

When I read the paper from Cisco. I would really like if Aerohive, would do the same. What is best practice for Mac computere. To day we have one SSID and radius to split the student. When I read the Cisco paper, and they are suggesting to SSID one for PC and for MAC. Is that a good idea Sam. I d'ont know.

[AnonymousM]

I can't really answer that as I know very little about your WLAN environment. As changing the base data rate also impacts Beacon frames and other management frames. Since 12 Mbps can be decoded at a further distance than 24 Mbps, clients may be even more sticky.

What channel width are you using? What specific radio profile configurations? There are some good docs from Aerohive on configuring things for high density in education here - http://docs.aerohive.com/330000/docs/help/english/ng/Content/reference/docs/deployment-guides.htm

If it were me, I'd look at cleaning up configuration. Find a way to make your WLAN fall in line as best it can with the links attached here and prior.

The other route is to hire a 3rd party to come and assist and clean up things. Aerohive themselves also sells professional services for this sort of thing.

[jan_boje]

​I have been reading the conclusion, should I try to go down 12 Mbps as the min. datarate ??

by the way it would be nice if Aerohive made the same whitepaper as Cisco 🙂