Remember too that "bars" can be misleading. Multiple SSIDs from the same AP at the same strength often show different bars- this alone can generate help desk calls. Refresh the view a view times, and the bars may change. Different clients calculate and show RSSI (which contributes to the bars display) in different ways, and bars for one SSID may actually come from a different AP than bars for another AP. It's easy to jump to conclusions based on this alone, but measuring the strength with a real tool will show actual strength from each access point (BSSID).
________________________________________ From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Blahut [[email protected]] Sent: Friday, November 05, 2010 4:12 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Observed Signal Strength On Encrypted Wireless Hello All, We are a Cisco CAPWAP shop and recently switched from non-encrypted web portal authenticated wireless to WPA2/802.1X/AES encrypted wireless with RADIUS and LDAP in the back end. I have received several help desk tickets with reports along the lines that “now that we are using the encrypted wireless the signal is weaker or unusable”. Anyone else experience this phenomenon? I can’t believe it’s the wireless network, same radios after all. I could see the client interpreting the signal level differently or the client associating to a more distant access point because the closer one is more heavily taxed due to the encryption. I could even see that the encrypted wireless is more sensitive to RF interference. Anyway, any thoughts or ideas are welcomed. Thanks, David ________________________________ No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com<http://www.avg.com> Version: 10.0.1153 / Virus Database: 424/3239 - Release Date: 11/05/10 ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
