So, remember when I said that AP count shouldn’t be a factor? Well let me add to that a bit. You also need to pay attention to the type of antenna you are using, as well as placement of AP. Please dear lord, PAY ATTENTION TO AP PLACEMENT!! Design, Design, Design!
I was called out to work at a customer site that was having issues with one of their warehouse spaces. Now this was not designed by anyone I work with, and it was kinda useable, but had roaming issues down one set of aisles in particular.
This in particular stuck in my head. The customer has a 3602e with an AIR-ANT-2566-P4W-R. This guy is a pretty powerful antenna, and the back lobe on this guy was….wow.
This AP was 90 feet away, mounted on a metal girder, and had to come through all that FSPL as well as people, machinery, and a metal shelving unit. The signal, from its back lobe!, was still useable for the most part, but once you got a few feet down the aisle, the devices were dropping off. There are APs farther down but the roam wasn’t clean.
So from a ‘coverage’ standpoint, it looked pretty good, from a usability standpoint, not so much. And then I find this guy.
This AP was mounted pretty much above the AP on the pole, but notice that it’s behind that big air intake unit. The lift you see in the RSSI image is the AP being moved about 10′ to the side. Once this AP was moved from behind the intake unit, roaming improved down the aisle where we had issues. Checking the rest of the area, we had no noticeable impact from this AP being moved, but time will tell.
So lesson learned:
- 1. Don’t mount your AP behind air intake unites
2. Pay attention to the back lobe from antennas you mount
3. Bacon is still awesome