Why the dual NICs on the R600 and T301 AP's

[Anonymous]

Evening folks 🙂

I am deploying a number of R600s and T301s around a client site. Thinking that I would be a clever dude and get the most out of my APs, I trunked 2 ports on my ProCurve switch and then plugged in cables to the APs. Well, long story short, I couldn't get my AP's to work correctly. I did a chat session with Ruckus TS and was told that neither of these AP's support LACP.

BTW, I have a SmartZone 100 and that doesnt support LACP trunking either.

So, I guess I really have 2 questions:

1) Why the 2 NIC ports on these APs

2) What is the best way to connect/setup these APs for the best possible throughput?

Thanks all!

[Anonymous]

The R710 is the first Ruckus that does LACP.  The other ports are usually for wired client connectivity (or sometimes another AP, in case your cable path is difficult). 

As far as throughput, I'd say just to make sure you're connected to the gigabit port on the AP.  It's unlikely that you will max out the Ethernet, as wave 1 AC would require beyond perfect conditions to push 1Gbps when overhead is concerned (no interference, 100% 3-stream AC clients, etc), and wireless is half-duplex anyway (where Ethernet isn't).

Basically, I wouldn't worry about the "only" 1Gbps Ethernet.  You're going to get the best you can even without LACP, because the airtime is going to fill up first.

[john_d]

Right, the 2 NIC ports are for either convenience or for more complicated networks that need to connect SSIDs to different VLANs / network segments that are physically tagged at the switch port, or something like that.

Basically, the only best practice to care for here is just making sure on the lower end AP's that you plug into a gigabit port instead of the 100mbit port.

And before the R710, you really don't need LACP  / bonding, as Mitchell explained, the circumstances that lead to wifi throughput over a gigabit are often contrived and unrealistic. Even with the R710, that requires highly loaded and ideal clients on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz, which is still unlikely to happen consistently.

This is a great Rucks document discussing gigabit wifi: http://a030f85c1e25003d7609-b98377aee968aad08453374eb1df3398.r40.cf2.rackcdn.com/wp/wp-802.11ac.pdf

Namely, "Page 6" covers the math behind what the true throughput is of "1750mbit" gigabit wifi.