Network Management

I'm fundamentally confused by the information that I see in VisualRF. I have the floor plans, and I draw walls and tag the walls with what they are made of. And I place my APs on the floor plan. 

Airwave then shows me heat maps for the APs -- is this the actual information where each individual AP is reporting back what it is doing? Or is this Airwave calculating what it would expect given the type of AP and what I told the program about the walls?


------------------------------
Cathy Fasano
------------------------------

Unfortunately it does not get that detailed. There is no good way of collecting and displaying RF heat maps by APs information only. The APs will estimate what it thinks it would be, and adjusts the heat map by the radio power. It it no where near as accurate as a site survey like you get from Ekahau/Airmagnet/etc... The best you can do is get as accurate with the wall attenuation as you can. From my experience the heat maps from VisualRF never match up to the heat maps from Ekahau. VisualRF is most useful for planning, and displaying inventory of AP locations.

------------------------------
Dustin Burns

Lead Mobility Engineer @Worldcom Exchange, Inc.

ACCX 1271| ACMX 509| ACSP | ACDA | MVP Guru 2022
If my post was useful accept solution and/or give kudos
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 05:30 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

I'm fundamentally confused by the information that I see in VisualRF. I have the floor plans, and I draw walls and tag the walls with what they are made of. And I place my APs on the floor plan. 

Airwave then shows me heat maps for the APs -- is this the actual information where each individual AP is reporting back what it is doing? Or is this Airwave calculating what it would expect given the type of AP and what I told the program about the walls?


------------------------------
Cathy Fasano
------------------------------

Visual RF reflects the signal strength seen from AP to AP.  The more APs that can see each other (more density) the more accurate the map will be.  The map can only see what APs "see", so only expect projected coverage where no APs are located.  Having the correct floor dimension entered will also help greatly.

The walls are only good for when you are doing a projected RF plan.  The coverage shown is the actual AP to AP signal strength, so the walls should not be a factor.  Again, this gets more accurate, if you have more access points that are in an area.

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 05:30 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

I'm fundamentally confused by the information that I see in VisualRF. I have the floor plans, and I draw walls and tag the walls with what they are made of. And I place my APs on the floor plan. 

Airwave then shows me heat maps for the APs -- is this the actual information where each individual AP is reporting back what it is doing? Or is this Airwave calculating what it would expect given the type of AP and what I told the program about the walls?


------------------------------
Cathy Fasano
------------------------------

Here's an example of what I mean. This dorm is the last one on our campus which still has APs in the hallways, with a re-design that moves them into rooms scheduled for this summer. So it doesn't work very well, and I'm trying to do minor tweaks to make things better. Right now I'm focused on what's going on in the wing that's in the bottom right of the picture.

In January, I added the AP ZE01 into the student room 129. Before I added that, the kid who lives there could keep a connection to ZD19 only with his door open. Yesterday I decided that ZE01 and ZD19 were too close together, and since ZD19 is clipped to the ceiling tile grid in the hallway it was a 10-minute job to get a ladder and move it 10 feet down the hallway. I then logged into Airwave and moved ZD19 on the floorplan.

It took about an hour, but then the heatmap patterns adjusted and there's a hot spot where I don't expect one. Obvious suspect is that somebody has plugged in a wireless ap of some kind into the wired port. (These guys are heavy gamers and so their ports are active.)

Of course this isn't just a technology problem, it's also a sociology problem. These kids (quite understandably) just want their access to work, and work as reliably as it can. I'm new to the job, and my boss is also relatively new. The previous regime was significantly more adversarial to the students -- I think we are far more sympathetic. If what Airwave is showing us is that the students have installed a rogue AP, the previous tech staff would have punished the students and made them take it down. My instinct is to go yell at them for putting up the rogue, but then REPLACE IT with a campus AP in the same location. And then try to use the students' experience as feedback to get a good reliable design.

But before I launch a social engineering project in this dorm, I need to make sure I have all of my facts straight.

------------------------------
Cathy Fasano
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 08:54 PM
From: Colin Joseph
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Visual RF reflects the signal strength seen from AP to AP.  The more APs that can see each other (more density) the more accurate the map will be.  The map can only see what APs "see", so only expect projected coverage where no APs are located.  Having the correct floor dimension entered will also help greatly.

The walls are only good for when you are doing a projected RF plan.  The coverage shown is the actual AP to AP signal strength, so the walls should not be a factor.  Again, this gets more accurate, if you have more access points that are in an area.

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 05:30 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

I'm fundamentally confused by the information that I see in VisualRF. I have the floor plans, and I draw walls and tag the walls with what they are made of. And I place my APs on the floor plan. 

Airwave then shows me heat maps for the APs -- is this the actual information where each individual AP is reporting back what it is doing? Or is this Airwave calculating what it would expect given the type of AP and what I told the program about the walls?


------------------------------
Cathy Fasano
------------------------------

That "hot spot" looks like coverage from an AP that is either above or below the current floor.  VisualRF should only show access points on your system, not "rogues" aps unless you have that enabled .

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 12:16 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Here's an example of what I mean. This dorm is the last one on our campus which still has APs in the hallways, with a re-design that moves them into rooms scheduled for this summer. So it doesn't work very well, and I'm trying to do minor tweaks to make things better. Right now I'm focused on what's going on in the wing that's in the bottom right of the picture.

In January, I added the AP ZE01 into the student room 129. Before I added that, the kid who lives there could keep a connection to ZD19 only with his door open. Yesterday I decided that ZE01 and ZD19 were too close together, and since ZD19 is clipped to the ceiling tile grid in the hallway it was a 10-minute job to get a ladder and move it 10 feet down the hallway. I then logged into Airwave and moved ZD19 on the floorplan.

It took about an hour, but then the heatmap patterns adjusted and there's a hot spot where I don't expect one. Obvious suspect is that somebody has plugged in a wireless ap of some kind into the wired port. (These guys are heavy gamers and so their ports are active.)

Of course this isn't just a technology problem, it's also a sociology problem. These kids (quite understandably) just want their access to work, and work as reliably as it can. I'm new to the job, and my boss is also relatively new. The previous regime was significantly more adversarial to the students -- I think we are far more sympathetic. If what Airwave is showing us is that the students have installed a rogue AP, the previous tech staff would have punished the students and made them take it down. My instinct is to go yell at them for putting up the rogue, but then REPLACE IT with a campus AP in the same location. And then try to use the students' experience as feedback to get a good reliable design.

But before I launch a social engineering project in this dorm, I need to make sure I have all of my facts straight.

------------------------------
Cathy Fasano

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 08:54 PM
From: Colin Joseph
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Visual RF reflects the signal strength seen from AP to AP.  The more APs that can see each other (more density) the more accurate the map will be.  The map can only see what APs "see", so only expect projected coverage where no APs are located.  Having the correct floor dimension entered will also help greatly.

The walls are only good for when you are doing a projected RF plan.  The coverage shown is the actual AP to AP signal strength, so the walls should not be a factor.  Again, this gets more accurate, if you have more access points that are in an area.

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 05:30 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

I'm fundamentally confused by the information that I see in VisualRF. I have the floor plans, and I draw walls and tag the walls with what they are made of. And I place my APs on the floor plan. 

Airwave then shows me heat maps for the APs -- is this the actual information where each individual AP is reporting back what it is doing? Or is this Airwave calculating what it would expect given the type of AP and what I told the program about the walls?


------------------------------
Cathy Fasano
------------------------------

Aha! Everything makes MUCH more sense!

On the floor above is a lounge, with an AP that was mounted incorrectly. I say "was" because it came off its bracket, pulled the box out of the wall, and for several weeks has been dangling from its ethernet cable. The problem is that our maintenance department wants to re-mount it in its original position, while I keep telling them that the AP is far more functional dangling from the ceiling precariously! This room is a lounge with a 2-story vaulted ceiling, and they put the AP high up on the wall and the antenna is facing out over the top of the room. In other words, it's a great signal if you can levitate, or have a flying carpet, or flying broomstick, but not so much for mere mortals. Somebody here linked to this brilliant animation:
Cesar F. on LinkedIn: #wifidesign #wifioptimization #wifi | 45 comments
Imagine this but with the AP-on-the-wall another story up *shakes head*

I've rigged up a bracket that I want them to screw into the top of the molding so that I can permanently mount  the AP in a much more useful position, and I took a photo of my hand holding the bracket where I want them to screw it down. In that picture you can see the dangling AP -- and sure enough, it is angled so that it points right at that hotspot that Airwave sees on the floor below. 

The attached picture shows the photo of the AP and then the Airwave pictures of that wing for the  2nd, 3rd, and 1st floors. I'm hoping that my blunders will be educational for others!

------------------------------
Cathy Fasano
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 03:30 PM
From: Colin Joseph
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

That "hot spot" looks like coverage from an AP that is either above or below the current floor.  VisualRF should only show access points on your system, not "rogues" aps unless you have that enabled .

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 12:16 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Here's an example of what I mean. This dorm is the last one on our campus which still has APs in the hallways, with a re-design that moves them into rooms scheduled for this summer. So it doesn't work very well, and I'm trying to do minor tweaks to make things better. Right now I'm focused on what's going on in the wing that's in the bottom right of the picture.

In January, I added the AP ZE01 into the student room 129. Before I added that, the kid who lives there could keep a connection to ZD19 only with his door open. Yesterday I decided that ZE01 and ZD19 were too close together, and since ZD19 is clipped to the ceiling tile grid in the hallway it was a 10-minute job to get a ladder and move it 10 feet down the hallway. I then logged into Airwave and moved ZD19 on the floorplan.

It took about an hour, but then the heatmap patterns adjusted and there's a hot spot where I don't expect one. Obvious suspect is that somebody has plugged in a wireless ap of some kind into the wired port. (These guys are heavy gamers and so their ports are active.)

Of course this isn't just a technology problem, it's also a sociology problem. These kids (quite understandably) just want their access to work, and work as reliably as it can. I'm new to the job, and my boss is also relatively new. The previous regime was significantly more adversarial to the students -- I think we are far more sympathetic. If what Airwave is showing us is that the students have installed a rogue AP, the previous tech staff would have punished the students and made them take it down. My instinct is to go yell at them for putting up the rogue, but then REPLACE IT with a campus AP in the same location. And then try to use the students' experience as feedback to get a good reliable design.

But before I launch a social engineering project in this dorm, I need to make sure I have all of my facts straight.

------------------------------
Cathy Fasano

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 08:54 PM
From: Colin Joseph
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Visual RF reflects the signal strength seen from AP to AP.  The more APs that can see each other (more density) the more accurate the map will be.  The map can only see what APs "see", so only expect projected coverage where no APs are located.  Having the correct floor dimension entered will also help greatly.

The walls are only good for when you are doing a projected RF plan.  The coverage shown is the actual AP to AP signal strength, so the walls should not be a factor.  Again, this gets more accurate, if you have more access points that are in an area.

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 05:30 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

I'm fundamentally confused by the information that I see in VisualRF. I have the floor plans, and I draw walls and tag the walls with what they are made of. And I place my APs on the floor plan. 

Airwave then shows me heat maps for the APs -- is this the actual information where each individual AP is reporting back what it is doing? Or is this Airwave calculating what it would expect given the type of AP and what I told the program about the walls?


------------------------------
Cathy Fasano
------------------------------

Even if it were mounted correctly, there would still be some "bleed" from the back of the AP that the aps in the floor above could see.  That is what is being reflected in VisualRF.  There is an option in VisualRF to not see this coverage in the floors above and below if you didn't want it. This in itself is not an issue, per se.  It is important that it is mounted pointing down, so that clients on the floor above are less likely to attach to it.

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 05:19 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Aha! Everything makes MUCH more sense!

On the floor above is a lounge, with an AP that was mounted incorrectly. I say "was" because it came off its bracket, pulled the box out of the wall, and for several weeks has been dangling from its ethernet cable. The problem is that our maintenance department wants to re-mount it in its original position, while I keep telling them that the AP is far more functional dangling from the ceiling precariously! This room is a lounge with a 2-story vaulted ceiling, and they put the AP high up on the wall and the antenna is facing out over the top of the room. In other words, it's a great signal if you can levitate, or have a flying carpet, or flying broomstick, but not so much for mere mortals. Somebody here linked to this brilliant animation:
Cesar F. on LinkedIn: #wifidesign #wifioptimization #wifi | 45 comments
Imagine this but with the AP-on-the-wall another story up *shakes head*

I've rigged up a bracket that I want them to screw into the top of the molding so that I can permanently mount  the AP in a much more useful position, and I took a photo of my hand holding the bracket where I want them to screw it down. In that picture you can see the dangling AP -- and sure enough, it is angled so that it points right at that hotspot that Airwave sees on the floor below. 

The attached picture shows the photo of the AP and then the Airwave pictures of that wing for the  2nd, 3rd, and 1st floors. I'm hoping that my blunders will be educational for others!

------------------------------
Cathy Fasano

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 03:30 PM
From: Colin Joseph
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

That "hot spot" looks like coverage from an AP that is either above or below the current floor.  VisualRF should only show access points on your system, not "rogues" aps unless you have that enabled .

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 12:16 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Here's an example of what I mean. This dorm is the last one on our campus which still has APs in the hallways, with a re-design that moves them into rooms scheduled for this summer. So it doesn't work very well, and I'm trying to do minor tweaks to make things better. Right now I'm focused on what's going on in the wing that's in the bottom right of the picture.

In January, I added the AP ZE01 into the student room 129. Before I added that, the kid who lives there could keep a connection to ZD19 only with his door open. Yesterday I decided that ZE01 and ZD19 were too close together, and since ZD19 is clipped to the ceiling tile grid in the hallway it was a 10-minute job to get a ladder and move it 10 feet down the hallway. I then logged into Airwave and moved ZD19 on the floorplan.

It took about an hour, but then the heatmap patterns adjusted and there's a hot spot where I don't expect one. Obvious suspect is that somebody has plugged in a wireless ap of some kind into the wired port. (These guys are heavy gamers and so their ports are active.)

Of course this isn't just a technology problem, it's also a sociology problem. These kids (quite understandably) just want their access to work, and work as reliably as it can. I'm new to the job, and my boss is also relatively new. The previous regime was significantly more adversarial to the students -- I think we are far more sympathetic. If what Airwave is showing us is that the students have installed a rogue AP, the previous tech staff would have punished the students and made them take it down. My instinct is to go yell at them for putting up the rogue, but then REPLACE IT with a campus AP in the same location. And then try to use the students' experience as feedback to get a good reliable design.

But before I launch a social engineering project in this dorm, I need to make sure I have all of my facts straight.

------------------------------
Cathy Fasano

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 08:54 PM
From: Colin Joseph
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Visual RF reflects the signal strength seen from AP to AP.  The more APs that can see each other (more density) the more accurate the map will be.  The map can only see what APs "see", so only expect projected coverage where no APs are located.  Having the correct floor dimension entered will also help greatly.

The walls are only good for when you are doing a projected RF plan.  The coverage shown is the actual AP to AP signal strength, so the walls should not be a factor.  Again, this gets more accurate, if you have more access points that are in an area.

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 05:30 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

I'm fundamentally confused by the information that I see in VisualRF. I have the floor plans, and I draw walls and tag the walls with what they are made of. And I place my APs on the floor plan. 

Airwave then shows me heat maps for the APs -- is this the actual information where each individual AP is reporting back what it is doing? Or is this Airwave calculating what it would expect given the type of AP and what I told the program about the walls?


------------------------------
Cathy Fasano
------------------------------

Ok, I'm not following here -- is there some reason that I don't want the students to be attaching to APs on the floors above or below? I've got several  buildings on on campus which are 100-130 years old, and lots of instances where signals move through floors more easily than walls. Especially when we place dorm APs where we are doing every other or every 3rd room, we deliberately offset the patterns on the adjacent floors as we are hoping that the room which is relatively far away from the APs on the same floor might have an AP directly above where the kids can get a decent signal. 

Is there some problem with doing it that way?

The students in rooms 102 & 103 -- which are on either side of that wall under the hot spot from the dangling AP on the  floor above -- have complained recently that they have a hard time getting and keeping a signal.  It might be a full 25 feet from the bottom of the dangling AP to the floors in their rooms below -- is that too far a distance?

------------------------------
Cathy Fasano
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 09:51 PM
From: Colin Joseph
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Even if it were mounted correctly, there would still be some "bleed" from the back of the AP that the aps in the floor above could see.  That is what is being reflected in VisualRF.  There is an option in VisualRF to not see this coverage in the floors above and below if you didn't want it. This in itself is not an issue, per se.  It is important that it is mounted pointing down, so that clients on the floor above are less likely to attach to it.

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 05:19 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Aha! Everything makes MUCH more sense!

On the floor above is a lounge, with an AP that was mounted incorrectly. I say "was" because it came off its bracket, pulled the box out of the wall, and for several weeks has been dangling from its ethernet cable. The problem is that our maintenance department wants to re-mount it in its original position, while I keep telling them that the AP is far more functional dangling from the ceiling precariously! This room is a lounge with a 2-story vaulted ceiling, and they put the AP high up on the wall and the antenna is facing out over the top of the room. In other words, it's a great signal if you can levitate, or have a flying carpet, or flying broomstick, but not so much for mere mortals. Somebody here linked to this brilliant animation:
Cesar F. on LinkedIn: #wifidesign #wifioptimization #wifi | 45 comments
Imagine this but with the AP-on-the-wall another story up *shakes head*

I've rigged up a bracket that I want them to screw into the top of the molding so that I can permanently mount  the AP in a much more useful position, and I took a photo of my hand holding the bracket where I want them to screw it down. In that picture you can see the dangling AP -- and sure enough, it is angled so that it points right at that hotspot that Airwave sees on the floor below. 

The attached picture shows the photo of the AP and then the Airwave pictures of that wing for the  2nd, 3rd, and 1st floors. I'm hoping that my blunders will be educational for others!

------------------------------
Cathy Fasano

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 03:30 PM
From: Colin Joseph
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

That "hot spot" looks like coverage from an AP that is either above or below the current floor.  VisualRF should only show access points on your system, not "rogues" aps unless you have that enabled .

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 12:16 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Here's an example of what I mean. This dorm is the last one on our campus which still has APs in the hallways, with a re-design that moves them into rooms scheduled for this summer. So it doesn't work very well, and I'm trying to do minor tweaks to make things better. Right now I'm focused on what's going on in the wing that's in the bottom right of the picture.

In January, I added the AP ZE01 into the student room 129. Before I added that, the kid who lives there could keep a connection to ZD19 only with his door open. Yesterday I decided that ZE01 and ZD19 were too close together, and since ZD19 is clipped to the ceiling tile grid in the hallway it was a 10-minute job to get a ladder and move it 10 feet down the hallway. I then logged into Airwave and moved ZD19 on the floorplan.

It took about an hour, but then the heatmap patterns adjusted and there's a hot spot where I don't expect one. Obvious suspect is that somebody has plugged in a wireless ap of some kind into the wired port. (These guys are heavy gamers and so their ports are active.)

Of course this isn't just a technology problem, it's also a sociology problem. These kids (quite understandably) just want their access to work, and work as reliably as it can. I'm new to the job, and my boss is also relatively new. The previous regime was significantly more adversarial to the students -- I think we are far more sympathetic. If what Airwave is showing us is that the students have installed a rogue AP, the previous tech staff would have punished the students and made them take it down. My instinct is to go yell at them for putting up the rogue, but then REPLACE IT with a campus AP in the same location. And then try to use the students' experience as feedback to get a good reliable design.

But before I launch a social engineering project in this dorm, I need to make sure I have all of my facts straight.

------------------------------
Cathy Fasano

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 08:54 PM
From: Colin Joseph
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Visual RF reflects the signal strength seen from AP to AP.  The more APs that can see each other (more density) the more accurate the map will be.  The map can only see what APs "see", so only expect projected coverage where no APs are located.  Having the correct floor dimension entered will also help greatly.

The walls are only good for when you are doing a projected RF plan.  The coverage shown is the actual AP to AP signal strength, so the walls should not be a factor.  Again, this gets more accurate, if you have more access points that are in an area.

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 05:30 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

I'm fundamentally confused by the information that I see in VisualRF. I have the floor plans, and I draw walls and tag the walls with what they are made of. And I place my APs on the floor plan. 

Airwave then shows me heat maps for the APs -- is this the actual information where each individual AP is reporting back what it is doing? Or is this Airwave calculating what it would expect given the type of AP and what I told the program about the walls?


------------------------------
Cathy Fasano
------------------------------

Coverage from a floor below, especially in an older building with beefier construction is frequently unreliable.   Building materials can weaken, attenuate or corrupt a signal, so coverage through building materials is suboptimal.  Line of sight is the best, followed by a single wall made out of drywall.  Anything more than a single wall and clients could have signal or performance  issues.  That is why mounting in halls is such a poor design.

My comment above is that it is not bad for an access point to see another access point on a different floor.  If a client however,connects to an access point on the floor below there could be a performance penalty.

I hope that makes sense.

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 28, 2022 11:18 AM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Ok, I'm not following here -- is there some reason that I don't want the students to be attaching to APs on the floors above or below? I've got several  buildings on on campus which are 100-130 years old, and lots of instances where signals move through floors more easily than walls. Especially when we place dorm APs where we are doing every other or every 3rd room, we deliberately offset the patterns on the adjacent floors as we are hoping that the room which is relatively far away from the APs on the same floor might have an AP directly above where the kids can get a decent signal. 

Is there some problem with doing it that way?

The students in rooms 102 & 103 -- which are on either side of that wall under the hot spot from the dangling AP on the  floor above -- have complained recently that they have a hard time getting and keeping a signal.  It might be a full 25 feet from the bottom of the dangling AP to the floors in their rooms below -- is that too far a distance?

------------------------------
Cathy Fasano

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 09:51 PM
From: Colin Joseph
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Even if it were mounted correctly, there would still be some "bleed" from the back of the AP that the aps in the floor above could see.  That is what is being reflected in VisualRF.  There is an option in VisualRF to not see this coverage in the floors above and below if you didn't want it. This in itself is not an issue, per se.  It is important that it is mounted pointing down, so that clients on the floor above are less likely to attach to it.

------------------------------
Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 05:19 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Aha! Everything makes MUCH more sense!

On the floor above is a lounge, with an AP that was mounted incorrectly. I say "was" because it came off its bracket, pulled the box out of the wall, and for several weeks has been dangling from its ethernet cable. The problem is that our maintenance department wants to re-mount it in its original position, while I keep telling them that the AP is far more functional dangling from the ceiling precariously! This room is a lounge with a 2-story vaulted ceiling, and they put the AP high up on the wall and the antenna is facing out over the top of the room. In other words, it's a great signal if you can levitate, or have a flying carpet, or flying broomstick, but not so much for mere mortals. Somebody here linked to this brilliant animation:
Cesar F. on LinkedIn: #wifidesign #wifioptimization #wifi | 45 comments
Imagine this but with the AP-on-the-wall another story up *shakes head*

I've rigged up a bracket that I want them to screw into the top of the molding so that I can permanently mount  the AP in a much more useful position, and I took a photo of my hand holding the bracket where I want them to screw it down. In that picture you can see the dangling AP -- and sure enough, it is angled so that it points right at that hotspot that Airwave sees on the floor below. 

The attached picture shows the photo of the AP and then the Airwave pictures of that wing for the  2nd, 3rd, and 1st floors. I'm hoping that my blunders will be educational for others!

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Cathy Fasano

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 03:30 PM
From: Colin Joseph
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

That "hot spot" looks like coverage from an AP that is either above or below the current floor.  VisualRF should only show access points on your system, not "rogues" aps unless you have that enabled .

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Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 25, 2022 12:16 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Here's an example of what I mean. This dorm is the last one on our campus which still has APs in the hallways, with a re-design that moves them into rooms scheduled for this summer. So it doesn't work very well, and I'm trying to do minor tweaks to make things better. Right now I'm focused on what's going on in the wing that's in the bottom right of the picture.

In January, I added the AP ZE01 into the student room 129. Before I added that, the kid who lives there could keep a connection to ZD19 only with his door open. Yesterday I decided that ZE01 and ZD19 were too close together, and since ZD19 is clipped to the ceiling tile grid in the hallway it was a 10-minute job to get a ladder and move it 10 feet down the hallway. I then logged into Airwave and moved ZD19 on the floorplan.

It took about an hour, but then the heatmap patterns adjusted and there's a hot spot where I don't expect one. Obvious suspect is that somebody has plugged in a wireless ap of some kind into the wired port. (These guys are heavy gamers and so their ports are active.)

Of course this isn't just a technology problem, it's also a sociology problem. These kids (quite understandably) just want their access to work, and work as reliably as it can. I'm new to the job, and my boss is also relatively new. The previous regime was significantly more adversarial to the students -- I think we are far more sympathetic. If what Airwave is showing us is that the students have installed a rogue AP, the previous tech staff would have punished the students and made them take it down. My instinct is to go yell at them for putting up the rogue, but then REPLACE IT with a campus AP in the same location. And then try to use the students' experience as feedback to get a good reliable design.

But before I launch a social engineering project in this dorm, I need to make sure I have all of my facts straight.

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Cathy Fasano

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 08:54 PM
From: Colin Joseph
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

Visual RF reflects the signal strength seen from AP to AP.  The more APs that can see each other (more density) the more accurate the map will be.  The map can only see what APs "see", so only expect projected coverage where no APs are located.  Having the correct floor dimension entered will also help greatly.

The walls are only good for when you are doing a projected RF plan.  The coverage shown is the actual AP to AP signal strength, so the walls should not be a factor.  Again, this gets more accurate, if you have more access points that are in an area.

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Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 24, 2022 05:30 PM
From: Cathy Fasano
Subject: Airwave VisualRF -- shows what's expected or what's observed?

I'm fundamentally confused by the information that I see in VisualRF. I have the floor plans, and I draw walls and tag the walls with what they are made of. And I place my APs on the floor plan. 

Airwave then shows me heat maps for the APs -- is this the actual information where each individual AP is reporting back what it is doing? Or is this Airwave calculating what it would expect given the type of AP and what I told the program about the walls?


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Cathy Fasano
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