Have seen similar results with Dell laptop locking onto 802.11n at a distance and ignoring "same room" a/b/g. We are trying to avoid mixed deployments, and sounds like the same concerns extend to 11ac as well.
Jeff On 3/15/2014 11:12 PM, Alok Vimawala wrote: > Hi Frank, > > We just had an interesting incident in one of our buildings where half > of the ac radios stopped working. The building has Cisco 3602i APs > with the add-on 802.11ac Wave-1 module. So, the building turned into a > mixed 802.11n and 802.11ac deployment on the 5GHz spectrum. What we > saw in that building was that new Apple MacBook Pros with the 802.11ac > capable chipsets were preferring to associated with a bad 802.11ac > signal rather than connecting to a great (AP right above the laptop) > 802.11n signal. > > Clients seem to prefer protocols with highest theoretical throughput > regardless of signal strength and that behavior hasn't really changed > since the days when 802.11n was first introduced. My recommendation > would be to avoid mixed 5GHz 802.11n and 802.11ac environments. > > Thanks, > > Alok Vimawala > University of Michigan > > > On Sat, Mar 15, 2014 at 9:54 PM, Frank Sweetser <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > Hello all, > > we're beginning plans to upgrade our wireless infrastructure > from 11n to 11ac, and I'm hoping that someone can chime in on > their experience with mixed capability buildings. > > When we first went from 11a/b/g to 11n, we found that clients in > buildings with mixed capability APs had some odd roaming issues - > and by "odd", I mean utterly braindead. A fair number of clients > would aggressively latch onto an 11n AP at -80, while ignoring an > a/b/g AP in the same room at -50, with predictably poor results. > In the end, we had to ensure that buildings were upgraded in > full, rather than incrementally, to fix the complaints. > > My question is, has anyone seen similar issues in buildings with a > mix of 11ac and 11n APs? > > -- > Frank Sweetser fs at wpi.edu <http://wpi.edu> | For every > problem, there is a solution that > Manager of Network Operations | is simple, elegant, and wrong. > Worcester Polytechnic Institute | - HL Mencken > > ********** > 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/. > ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
