[cisco-voip] Wireless Coverage problem

Wed Sep 1 18:46:39 EDT 2010

It seems to me pretty likely that if you're using 2.4 GHz, then with 10 APs in warehouse you are going to suffer from a lot of co-channel interference. In which case, yes the controller would normally back down the power levels in order to try and avoid it. You could manually override the power levels, but then you'd be back at co-channel interference. The ideal solution would be to use fewer APs if you don't need the density, or switch to 5 GHz if you do need the density.

You could test if this is what's at play but shutting off all the APs, then turning on just one of them. Or you could look in the logs. ;-)

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From: cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net [mailto:cisco-voip-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Ahmed Abd EL-Rahman
Sent: September-01-10 3:40 PM
To: Ben Story
Cc: cisco-voip
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] Wireless Coverage problem

Hi Ben,

*         The antennas are two dipole antennas with Omni directional radiation pattern.

*         The antennas are oriented vertically and perpendicular to the AP body.

*         The coverage is weak with all clients but with different levels but my main concern is to make it work with this hand held.

*         The place was a warehouse.

*         The tests were identical without any type of security (no encryption and open authentication) and with the same SSID.
The main thing that come into my mind is whether there is a settings on the controller that make the AP optimized for the coverage not for the throughput as the main purpose of this solution is for hand held which means that the data rate is not critical.
Another thing there are 10 APs in the warehouse, so is it possible that the controller by default reduces the coverage of each AP to reduce interference and if this is right, is there is a way to override this behavior to solve the coverage problem ?

Your help is high appreciated.

Best Regards

Ahmed Abd EL-Rahman

From: Ben Story [mailto:ben.story at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2010 11:25 PM
To: Ahmed Abd EL-Rahman
Subject: Re: [cisco-voip] Wireless Coverage problem

What kind of antennae are you using?  How are they oriented?  Does the same thing happen with a client with a different wireless chipset?  Were the tests identical (ie was the linksys setup for the same authentication, wireless security and SSID Broadcast settings)?
On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 2:46 PM, Ahmed Abd EL-Rahman <Ahmed.Rahman at bmbgroup.com<mailto:Ahmed.Rahman at bmbgroup.com>> wrote:
Hi All,
                I have 1 WLAN controller 2112 and 10 APs 1242G with external antennas and I'm facing a problem in the coverage, as while standing directly under any AP (about 4 meters far) without any obstacles in-between the signal received at the hand held device is good and when moving little a bit away the signal decreases to fair and poor while by using a cheap stand alone Linksys AP in the same place the signal in the hand held is excellent which is normal due to the small distance.

So anyone has any reasons or solution for this situation ?, maybe there are some settings in the controller can make the AP optimized for coverage distance or something like this, please advise.

Best Regards

Ahmed Abd EL-Rahman I Senior Network Engineer
CCVP, CCNP, CCNA, CCNA-VOICE, IPTX, UCCX, CRMCS, WLSS
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