What requirements does Aerohive recommend users applying in Ekahau Site Survey for Channel Overlap, Signal Strength, etc.?

[derek_tonkin]

I recently did a wireless survey of a site with Aerohive AP250s and am seeing a ton of channel overlap using the default Voice + Data settings I normally use. Ekahau's software includes predefined requirements for Aruba, Cisco, and Ruckus but not Aerohive. I reached out to their support and they said they would love to have recommended requirements from Aerohive to include in the predefined options.

[tobias_s_jonsso]

I think most of these values depend more on the requirements of the client and the site it self than some defaults any company sets. That said the accesspoints datasheets have some information about sensitivity and datarates.

https://www.aerohive.com/wp-content/uploads/Aerohive_Datasheet_AP250.pdf

[derek_tonkin]

I'm aware of all of that, I am not an Aerohive customer myself though. I am an independent contractor that does Wireless Site Surveys of businesses, schools, etc. to help them understand where weak points in their network are and what issues might be causing problems with their wireless network performance. In order to properly evaluate wireless networks where Aerohive's APs are deployed it would be helpful to know what Aerohive's recommendations are for some basic measurements like co-channel interference.

Ekahau is the leader in this type of vendor-agnostic survey technology and their tool comes with recommended requirements for some of Aerohive's largest competitors. They have indicated that they would be happy to include recommended requirements for Aerohive if y'all would supply them. Since I am currently evaluating a customer that has Aerohive APs deployed I'm trying to reach out to y'all for that information to help us all out.

Here are the Network Requirements I'm looking for Aerohive's recommendations on:

• Signal strength: Minimum signal strength for the strongest AP at any given location
• Signal-to-noise ratio: Minimum SNR for the strongest AP at any given location
• Data rate: Required data rate from APs at any given map location
• Number of APs: The minimum number of audible APs, given a minimum signal strength
• Channel Overlap: The maximum number of audible APs on the same channel, given a minimum signal strength
• Ping Round Trip Time: Minimum round trip time for ping
• Packet Loss: Packet loss %, calculated from the last 10 packets

[samantha_lynn]

I can't speak to Ekahau specifically, but our Network 360 tab (or Maps tab if you're using Classic) offer a variety of planning tools for your network, including power and channel displays to help you map out the network so we are varying the channels as much as possible between neighboring APs, and so we can adjust the power levels to find a balance between covering the entire network area with signal and not overlapping signals with neighboring APs.

To use the Network 360 or Maps tab, you would want to upload a map of your area and scale it as close to the actual size as possible so we can display accurate signal range information. Once the map is uploaded, you'll want to fill in the walls and environmental features (windows, doors, cubicles, brick walls, etc.). Then we can either place existing APs on the map in their respective locations, or we can add simulated devices to see the affects of devices in particular areas before purchasing new devices.

Our APs also have an auto channel and power selection feature, but this requires that the APs are able to do periodic background scans (settings for this are in the Radio Profiles), as they use these scans to adjust the power and channel settings to best fit the network environment at the time.