56 Laptops on one AP

[catch21]

For the first time since I installed the new wireless we had two laptop trolleys worth of connections through one AP.

 

I'm awaiting further reports of user experience but it appears some slowing down of the system was observed. At the time I checked CPU occupancy of the AP (51%) and link utilisation of anything else relevant in the network and observed nothing untoward.

 

My first thoughts are the noisy RF environment 56 laptop users in the same proximity would cause. Anyone else got any experience of this sort of usage please? The kit is Ruckus and sound as a bell, but the observed "slowing down" is telling me something.

 

I have since upped the TX power from 1/4 to 1/2 to bring the adjacent channel signal levels up from -80dBm to a more useable -70dBm and reduced the maximum number of users per access point down from 100 to 35 in the hope of diverting the second set of laptops onto an adjacent area's access point. Again, any thoughts on this strategy please?

Edited December 7, 2013 by catch21

[LukeTitmus]

Most the of the ruckus access points can handle 30 concurrent connections on each radio so I am glad to see you have reduced the amount of devices connecting to it.

 

What are the devices you are connecting trying to do? if they are data intensive this will cause a contention ratio. each device wants air time to transmit, the more devices the less air time available for transmissions and more collisions occur (wasted air time)

 

In terms of your co channel interference, I would begin with seeing what channel each access point is on. use 1/6/11 make sure two access points on the same channel are not next to each other, if possible make sure no two access points that are on the same channel area accessible from one location.

 

In terms of the power used it totally depends on your environment, I would recommend leaving it on default.

[Quackers]

Do your laptops and AP support both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz? We use to do a 50/50 split on each frequency when we had laptop trolleys worked great. I've noticed a lot of the lower end market laptops and tablets don't support 5Ghz though which is a shame as thats the least congested band.

[kevin_lane]

Also worth looking at the aggression as some laptops tend to stay locked on to particular aps we have some most of the laptops if not all to high so they can bounce of other aps tyou will need to look at the wifi cards hardware properties

[JonDaviesBourne]

You're probably seeing slow-down because of the way wireless cards transmit over TCP/IP. They use CSMA/CA (Carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) so with 56 cards attempting to transmit in the same area will cause slow down, especially if they are all on the same channel.