Matt & Lee -
At Emory, we've disabled the 1 & 2 Mbps data rates on our healthcare wireless
network for our VoIP over Wi-Fi and electronic medical records SSIDs in 2 of
our hospitals. The hospitals are "hot" environments - lots of APs. Doing so
improved the quality of our wireless voice traffic tremendously. It also
improved our electronic medical records connectivity as well - less roaming
between APs means fewer authentications. We've been running with the disabled
data rates since last fall with no problems.
We have not done this (yet) on the academic network, but are looking into it at
certain high density locations. The Aruba gear we are running allows doing
this on a per SSID and per AP (or per building) basis - very flexible.
We haven't done this for our guest network, even in those hot environments.
BTW - for guest authentication, we use a captive portal, but have MAC auth for
pre- registered iPhones, gaming devices, and PDAs to bypass the captive portal.
Users must bring the device to our clean-room to get the device registered and
we only register devices that can't support WPA/WPA2-Enterprise (802.1x).
>>-> Stan Brooks - CWNA/CWSP
Emory University
Network Communications Division
404.727.0226
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
AIM: WLANstan Yahoo!: WLANstan MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
________________________________________
From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Barber, Matt [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 8:13 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Disabling 1, 2 Mbps- revisit
Hi Lee,
We have been running with the 1 and 2 Mbps data rates disabled for quite some
time. The Meru stuff lets us do it by ESS, which actually ended up being very
helpful because of one issue I found.
We have a separate SSID for devices (iPods, gaming consoles, etc) that is using
WEP. I started off having the 1 and 2 data rates disabled on this SSID as
well, until I found that the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS did not like it. In
doing a packet capture over the air, the Wii would just sit there doing probe
requests, get probe responses from the APs, but then just keep on probe
requesting. It would never try and associate. Turning the low data rates back
on for this ESS resolved the issue.
I contacted Nintendo about it and they said I may be correct, but said they
didn’t understand why I would want to turn those data rates off.
Those were the only devices I found that had any issue. In general, I see the
same things as you in terms of clients not connecting to distant APs.
Take care,
Matt Barber
Network Analyst / PC Support
Morrisville State College
315-684-6053
From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:[EMAIL
PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lee H Badman
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 7:57 AM
To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Disabling 1, 2 Mbps- revisit
I recall someone floating this not too long ago, but can’t recall the responses.
Being an LWAPP environment (currently) and growing fast in AP numbers and
overall density, I’m considering disabling 1 and 2 Mbps data rates globally. I
did this in an under the radar test for a couple of months on some of our
busiest APs with no ill effects noted and what I see as fewer weak clients
trying to get on board busy cells.
Has anyone else taken this step? Curious in general, and in LWAPP., and if
there have been any ill effects noted. One concern/peeve I have is that in
LWAPP its controller wide- if there is some compelling reason to change the
data rate on just a few APs in one area, you have no choice but to do the same
for all APs on the controller.
Thanks-
Lee
Lee H. Badman
Wireless/Network Engineer
Information Technology and Services
Syracuse University
315 443-3003
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