Separation of different types of wireless clients

[Modus]

For the longest time we've had separate vlans and SSID's for our hundreds microsoft devices (uses cert based auth), apple devices and google devices. I'm thinking about consolidating to 1 SSID and 1 vlan for wireless devices, do any of you have a setup that is like this? I know the apple vlan and SSID was created because of how chatty the apple devices are and because of the size of the apple updates.

[AlanD]

Multiple SSIDs are generally a Very bad idea, because the repeated broadcasting of their presence at the lower 'b' data rates uses an alarming high percentage of your overall bandwidth. It's not unusual for it to be 20 or 30 percent unless you configure your AP S away from their default settings.

 

One SSID would be good if you are concerned about giving users maximum bandwidth. But sometimes it's necessary to have a second. I would use radius authentication to allocate different user groups to different Vlans ets. A second SSID which does not use enterprise radius might be necessary for guests... But WPA authentication is crackable by students.. Not as easily done as WEP but quite possible for students with a little determination and knowledge of how to Google it. Some schools... Simply have no Idea their students are connecting...