All set up -- but a couple of questions

[jason_sparrow]

Well, I have just set up my r600's in the house, and I cannot believe how easy it was, even via the web host!

Now that's all done, I have noticed that some devices appear to be connected to both ap's at the same time. I have tried tweaking the power settings etc but they still seem to hang on. Is there anything else I have missed that I should try?

Also, is there a way of renaming each device in the list rather than having to guess what the ip/mac address is?

Thanks!

[jason_sparrow]

One thing i was also going to ask was, would i be better manually setting the wifi channels?

We don't have that many rogue AP's so was maybe wondering if it would make any difference with device connection and making them more stable?

As i said, im not noticing any drop outs at the moment.

Just seeing if anything needed fine tuning that i was capable of doing without breaking anything!

😄

[john_d]

Generally speaking, ChannelFly (or in standalone lingo, "SmartSelect") will select the optimal channels for your area, particularly in a crowded RF environment with lots of rogue AP's. Furthermore, ChannelFly responds *dynamically* in realtime to changes in the RF spectrum. For example, channel 1 might be unused in your house, but let's say you invite me to dinner and I'm a jerk -- I could take out my cell phone and tether it to my laptop using wifi channel 1, and all of sudden channel 1 is hogged by me. If you were using ChannelFly, within a few seconds your AP would realize channel 1 now has very little capacity compared to before, and switch to a different channel.

So that's the good news... The bad news is: ChannelFly attempts to announce / coordinate its channel changes through a protocol called 802.11h, which allows an AP to alert clients that a channel change is about to happen. Clients are supposed to heed that advisory and hence seamlessly migrate to the new channel. However, not all clients gracefully handle these advisories. Sometimes, when ChannelFly changes channels, it causes a poorly behaving client to just lose the wifi network.

If you have such poorly behaving clients, you can try to increase the ChannelFly MTBC (Mean Time Between Change) such that switches become less frequent. Or, some folks like a "run stop" mode of operation, where you run ChannelFly for a few hours to see what channels the AP's pick automatically, then you manually lock the AP's on those channels. That, however, loses the benefit of ChannelFly's ability to adapt in realtime to changes in nearby rogue AP traffic.


If your home RF environment is relatively clean, then you might benefit from static channel assignment. However, I live in a dense apartment complex and see 100+ rogue AP's. For me, ChannelFly's ability to find the cleanest channel is well worth the tradeoff of occasional channel changes (e.g. once every 4 hours), especially since the majority of my devices are also Apple devices and they seem to handle the channel changes gracefully.

[seanmuir]

Like John has said already Channelfly can either be a good or a bad thing.

A good example is that the Sky HD box does not like Channelfly 😞

[jason_sparrow]

Thankfully, anything that has Cat5 port has a network plug in it :))

[seanmuir]

Ditto

Its not all about WiFi 🙂