Jobos Posted March 9, 2015 Posted March 9, 2015 I started the real time monitoring on the ZD to see how things were running and was a bit surprized that none of the clients were using the 5GHz band. On the attached screen shot the AP is an ZF7372 and the clients are 2 year old Toshiba NP300's Is there anyway to push the throughput anymore?
Gaz Posted March 9, 2015 Posted March 9, 2015 (edited) On Meraki AP's you can force clients onto the 5GHz band with a feature called band steering, does Ruckus have a similar feature? EDIT: I can't find any specs on a Toshiba NP300 Google returns back with NEC NP300 projectors. What type of devices are they? do they support dual band? Edited March 9, 2015 by Gaz
jtotheb Posted March 10, 2015 Posted March 10, 2015 I started the real time monitoring on the ZD to see how things were running and was a bit surprized that none of the clients were using the 5GHz band. On the attached screen shot the AP is an ZF7372 and the clients are 2 year old Toshiba NP300's Toshiba NB300 netbooks? Pretty sure they've only got b/g/n wifi cards so they're only going to connect on the 2.4ghz band.
Sagima Posted March 10, 2015 Posted March 10, 2015 (edited) I noticed yesterday that one of my 7372s wasn't broadcasting all of its ssids - deleting it from the controller and factory resetting it and reconfiguring it sorted it out but nothing else I tried did. Have you checked your 5ghz ssids are up on that AP? Top right hand corner of the AP's monitoring page Edited March 10, 2015 by Sagima
zag Posted March 10, 2015 Posted March 10, 2015 Get a macbook air connected as it does 5ghz. Thats me default test device these days. Sometimes connects at over a 1gb/s on our Aurba system!
Jobos Posted March 10, 2015 Author Posted March 10, 2015 Toshiba NB300 netbooks? Pretty sure they've only got b/g/n wifi cards so they're only going to connect on the 2.4ghz band. I thought n wifi was 5GHz? Anyway just had a look and I see there is an ipad connected on the 5GHz band so the problem must be with the laptops. Tomorrow I'll get a laptop and check the settings but I'll be surprized if there's anything to change.
snagrat Posted March 10, 2015 Posted March 10, 2015 n wifi is 2.4Ghz or 2.4Ghz/5Ghz. Most cheap devices will just have 2.4Ghz cards in
m25man Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 As stated you need a/b/g/n cards in your laptops to be able to associate to 5ghz radios. You also need laptops with multiple antennas to be able to use MIMO so in many cases upgrading the internal wireless cards won't help you either. Many schools paid top dollar for cutting edge wifi and never saw more that 50-60 mb links! The amount of primary schools I've seen that were upsold to very expensive dual band wifi systems that never even had a 5ghz device to service whom are now only just beginning to populate with 5ghz clients, whilst being faced with wifi hardware that is itself now obsolete or being retired! I guess that's the price you pay for being early adopters or poorly advised.
zag Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 Yep thats why the Macbook air is such a good test device. It has 5ghz and 3 antennas so it should handle any speed. I'm not even sure any windows laptops can match that.
tmcd35 Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 We're having managed wifi installed over the summer (fingers crossed) and have been advised by a couple of the bidders (for the contract) about trying to use 5ghz over 2.4ghz, so this is a thread/subject I'm very interested in at the moment. @VeryPC, do any of your laptops include 5ghz N wireless as standard? If so are you able/willing to disclose starting prices for those models? I think I'm going to be making 5ghz a part of our standard laptop spec when we do our next refresh in October.
zag Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 We bung these in our old laptops. But you are still restricted by the amount of antennas they have Intel 7260.HMWWB - Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 Network Adaptor PCI Express Half Mini Card 802.11ac 2x2 Bluetooth 4.0 USB: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories
VeryPC_Colin_M Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 We're having managed wifi installed over the summer (fingers crossed) and have been advised by a couple of the bidders (for the contract) about trying to use 5ghz over 2.4ghz, so this is a thread/subject I'm very interested in at the moment. @VeryPC, do any of your laptops include 5ghz N wireless as standard? If so are you able/willing to disclose starting prices for those models? I think I'm going to be making 5ghz a part of our standard laptop spec when we do our next refresh in October. Hi Terry, Thanks for asking. Most of our laptops ship with Intel N-7260 2.4GHz 300Mbps bgn, and we provide an option to upgrade to Intel AC-7260 2.4 - 5GHz Dual band 867Mbps AC for those customers who are running AC networks or are planning to run AC networks in the near future. It's not a huge leap in price but does depend on the original price of the laptop. It's our intention to standardise on 5GHz cards throughout our laptop range. Cheers, Col 2
Gaz Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 Yep thats why the Macbook air is such a good test device. It has 5ghz and 3 antennas so it should handle any speed. I'm not even sure any windows laptops can match that. My Dell Latitude E5530 is a 3x3 Dualband N Windows laptop albeit only up to 450Mb/s
zag Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 Hi Terry, Thanks for asking. Most of our laptops ship with Intel N-7260 2.4GHz 300Mbps bgn, and we provide an option to upgrade to Intel AC-7260 2.4 - 5GHz Dual band 867Mbps AC for those customers who are running AC networks or are planning to run AC networks in the near future. It's not a huge leap in price but does depend on the original price of the laptop. It's our intention to standardise on 5GHz cards throughout our laptop range. Cheers, Col Good to know you can install this, will be ordering those in future Nice one! 1
jtotheb Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 We bung these in our old laptops. But you are still restricted by the amount of antennas they have Intel 7260.HMWWB - Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 Network Adaptor PCI Express Half Mini Card 802.11ac 2x2 Bluetooth 4.0 USB: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories We've done similar and coupled those cards with an SSD for a cost-effective performance boost.
Jobos Posted March 11, 2015 Author Posted March 11, 2015 @snagrat @m25man Spot on, the cards are 2.5GHz only. When I bought the laptops I didn't know there was a difference in N networking but they are a cheapish i5 type so can't complain as it was my fault.
smithson83 Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 @zag I'm gonna put my money where your mouth is, and give these a try. We have some laptops that are quote slow on the network, see if one of these helps. Cheers in advance
m25man Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 Probably not a deal breaker but those Intel AC cards seem to have a big problem with their Bluetooth 4.0 implementation I have had a number of laptops that after installing them they have problems with the BT Stack. I ended up having to disable Bluetooth. WiFi works good though! Don't buy a load of them until you've tested them in your targets.
Marshall_IT Posted March 11, 2015 Posted March 11, 2015 (edited) Sometimes the performance on 2.4 will be better, say at range to the AP or through walls etc. it really depends on your AP placements. If you have one AP per room 5Ghz is going to be the best for you but you also have to consider how many clients and your back haul speed. Most APs still only have 1G eth and if you get a few 5Ghz devices you are quickly going to reach another bottleneck. I've changed our staff iPads SSID to be 5Ghz only, staff laptops to be 2.4/5Ghz and student iPads to be 2.4Ghz only to get better density per AP. not sure if it's the best implementation but it seems to be working well so far. Edited March 11, 2015 by Marshall_IT 2
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now