You can employ what I call "psychological band steering". X University Fast X University (normal, slow, legacy, old etc.)
Something like that. A friend of mine runs the Wi-Fi network for a VERY large retailer and they are 5 GHz only on their primary SSID. Jake makes a good point for sure if there are outages though. I think the naming above may help? GT On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 6:16 PM Curtis K. Larsen <curtis.k.lar...@utah.edu> wrote: > Hi James, > > We've been slowly marching down this path for about a year and a half. We > have a branded WPA2-Enterprise SSID, eduroam, and an i-PSK SSID. After > applying a new 5GHz-Only design we communicate the benefits to building > occupants and migrate our branded SSID (which 90% of users already connect > to) in that building to 5GHz-Only. Then eduroam and our i-PSK SSID remain > dual-band. > > We are 50+ buildings into the process out of 250-ish. In our first 40 > buildings (IT bldg, student housing, union, library) I think we got one > ticket for an Android phone, and pointed the user to eduroam. In our last > 10 buildings (primarily hospitals) I think we got 2 tickets - one for a > small batch of laptops, and one for an ultrasound machine. We pointed the > Client Manager to Amazon/Campus store for a 5GHz Wi-Fi dongle and put the > ultrasound device on our i-PSK SSID ...and on we go to the next set of > buildings. > > User experience was night/day for us in our new IT building - much, much > better. Stats indicate much lower channel utilization and many fewer > interference sources. My only recommendation would be to have proof that > the RF design supports the change (for even the least-capable 5GHz device) > before you do it, and to have several rock-solid fallback plans for the 2.4 > only devices/use cases. The gotchas are the time and cost to get the AP > density up-to-snuff organization-wide. Honestly, I'm not sure if the > entire campus will ever reach the goal at the rate we're going - but it > sure has been nice to eliminate many of the most common problems from some > of our most mission-critical buildings. > > Thanks, > > -- > Curtis K. Larsen > Network Engineer III > Infrastructure Ops > CWNA, CWDP, CWSP, CWAP > The University of Utah > > ________________________________________ > From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv < > WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> on behalf of Jake Snyder < > jsnyde...@gmail.com> > Sent: Friday, January 31, 2020 4:38 PM > To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU > Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] New and separate SSID for 2.4Ghz? > > A fun story that happened to me at a university: > > They did as you propose. 2.4GHz only and 5GHz only separate SSIDs. first > week of school they had ~80% of clients on 5GHz. > > About three weeks before the end of the semester, Wi-Fi complaints have > gone up, and the percentage of clients on 2.4GHz had grown to 50%. This is > when i got a call to come look at it. > > Over the course of the semester, a DHCP outage and internet circuit outage > led folks to try “to see if the other network was working.” But, when > students arrived on campus every morning, they picked up the 2.4GHz only > network first. Then they spend all day, because client won’t leave the > 2.4GHz SSID while it’s present. > > I asked for a 2 minute outage for the 2.4GHz network. I disabled it for 2 > minute and then re-enabled. 10 minutes later it was back to 80% 5GHz and > 20% 2.4GHz. > > The moral of the story: you can’t out engineer people’s behavior. When > things break, when they experience issues, they will try to work around > it. As much as some folks might imagine their networks are perfect, I’ve > yet to find one that is. > > The best way to overcome this, have a 5GHz only SSID and a Dual Band > SSID. That way if students do choose to connect to the other SSID, they > have a way for their device to make a better choice most of the time. This > also ensures that you can do the Apple Watch with a 2.4GHz radio without > dramatically hurting their iPhone’s connectivity. > > In summary: > Use dual band instead of a 2.4 GHz only network > Make sure 5GHz is 6db greater than 2.4GHz in transmit power. > > I would also add, make sure you don’t use band steering on either network. > > Jake Snyder > > > > Sent from my iPad > > On Jan 31, 2020, at 4:13 PM, Seddon, James < > 00000159faeb9fd9-dmarc-requ...@listserv.educause.edu> wrote: > > > Happy Friday, everyone! > > In high density areas of our campus (library, center of > campus food courts, large lecture halls, etc), we often turn off some > 2.4Ghz radios to help avoid co-channel interference issues. > > We think we’re seeing behavior where client devices in motion attach to an > AP in 2.4, then stubbornly hang on to that frequency (and sometimes AP), > even if they end up in a location with a much stronger 5 Ghz signal from a > closer AP. And of course, with the messy nature of the 2.4 band, they’re > even more susceptible to interference using a weak signal from a distant AP. > > We do have Cisco’s band steering already in play, but we think it might be > of limited benefit in situations like this. Our general advice is for > clients to prefer 5.0GHz when they can. But we think most users are just > letting their devices do what they want, and we really have no control over > that. > > We’re considering converting our main SSIDs to offer 5 GHz only. And > then creating a new SSID that offers 2.4 service (MainSSID2-4, or > Legacy2-4, or something). > > Because we believe we have good 5.0GHz coverage, we think this change > would be invisible to most users who have 5 GHz capable devices. Their > devices are already configured to connect to our main SSID, and they would > just do so in 5Ghz from then on. They’d see the 2.4 SSID offered if they > looked, of course. > > Clients that are 2.4 only would see our SSID disappear, and need > reconfiguration/reattachment, accept the cert…all the usual onboarding > stuff. Because of this, we’d only make this change after an extensive > communication period to include our support teams, campus partners, and > customers. > > Most of our campuses IOT-kinda-stuff (which tend both to be 2.4 and need > more attention/configuration) are already on a separate SSID that we > wouldn’t be touching. So nothing would change for them. > > Questions: > > > 1. Have other large campuses done this? We have ~400 buildings and > ~7,300 access points. We have upwards of 60,000 peak concurrent WiFi > connections, with maybe 14,000 of those in 2.4. We don’t know how to tell > how many of those can ONLY do 2.4, and how many are 5Ghz capable, but just > aren’t for some reason. > > 2. How did it work? > > 3. What were the lessons learned/gotchas, either from a technical or > non-technical/communication perspective? > > Other advice? > > Best Regards, > > James Seddon > Enterprise Network Operations - Voice and Data > Information Technology Services (ITS) > UC San Diego > 858-822-4040 > jsed...@ucsd.edu<mailto:jsed...@ucsd.edu> > > > ********** > Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire > community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the > message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. > Additional participation and subscription information can be found at > https://www.educause.edu/community > > ********** > Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire > community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the > message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. > Additional participation and subscription information can be found at > https://www.educause.edu/community > > > ********** > Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire > community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the > message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. > Additional participation and subscription information can be found at > https://www.educause.edu/community > ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community
