Wireless Access

I work for a large school district of 50+ schools and we have done our best to contain wireless access to the classroom to keep from CCI and various other issues. The administration has asked for access to be available in the hallways as well. Does anyone have any insight on design, plan, or layout within a school building? Anyone setup something similar and had success? I know each school will be a little different since some are multi-level but I am just looking for ideas. We run AOS-10 and are completely Aruba Central with the majority of APs being 315s, 345s, and 535s if that helps. Feel free to post pros and cons of this as well since there may be something I am forgetting when informing administration.

This really depends on the requirements that you have, and may need a severe redesign.

If it is for voice roaming, you may get away with filling up you coverage holes in the corridors, or if it is for a handful of device and only for a short term, put APs in the corners to prevent devices for a forced roam when you take a turn. Then just add the voice SSID on those APs. Staff members that occasionally traverse the corridors can be covered in that way. If you need support for many students while changing classrooms, your design may be more complex as you may need high-density in those areas. It also depends if you need support for uninterrupted roaming (like for voice) or best-effort, and it depends on the capacity needed.

Note that placing your APs in corridors is 'not-done' for covering the rooms adjacent to the corridor. If you have in-room APs and add APs in the corridors to fill up the gaps, that is less of an issue, but take into account the channel planning/CCI. It may help to consult someone to design this for you or together with you.


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Herman Robers
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If you have urgent issues, always contact your Aruba partner, distributor, or Aruba TAC Support. Check https://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/contact-support/ for how to contact Aruba TAC. Any opinions expressed here are solely my own and not necessarily that of Hewlett Packard Enterprise or Aruba Networks.

In case your problem is solved, please invest the time to post a follow-up with the information on how you solved it. Others can benefit from that.
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You should do a survey first, at peak hour.

Eg. WiFi Site Survey Software netspotapp.com

And read the document.

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Steinar
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