[SZ100] 5GHz Radio Channelization: Auto vs 80 vs 40 vs 20?

[clayton_taverni]

I attended a very nice Ruckus class yesterday and learned that my 5GHz radio channelization should maybe be at 40 or even 20 instead of the default 80.  

So I go into my SZ100 controller and look at the Common Settings and see that the 5GHz channelization is set to Auto.

Confused, I look at a particular AP and see it's 5GHz channelization seems to have a default of 80 which I can override and set to Auto, 40 or 20.

Very confused now, I'm wondering what the Auto setting in Common Settings gives me?  Why the APs are showing a grayed out 80 instead of Auto?  And where would I set the channelization to 40 if I wanted to?

Thanks in advance.

[gowtham_elamuru]

I have set it to 40MHz manually for 5GHz and felt heavy client disconnection in a high density environment with heavy interference. New client's were not able to join in the WLAN. Any specific reasons??

[clayton_taverni]

I'm not with Ruckus Support but 40MHz channels aren't as powerful as 80MHz channels.  Using 40MHz will give you roughly twice the number of clear channels as 80MHz but at half the strength.

If you have heavy interference, you either need more APs or to go back to 80MHz.

Again, not Ruckus Support.

[clayton_taverni]

Bump

[clayton_taverni]

Bump

[robert_lowe_722]

Its actually the opposite, the shorter the channel width the more powerful the signal. Maybe you are confusing power and throughput? When choosing a channel width you also have to consider density, CCI and client types. Its important to note that Ruckus 802.11AC AP's will ALWAYS default to 80MHz channels. IME there is no point using the auto feature other than convenience of not changing as ive never seen an Ruckus AC AP choose anything other than 80MHz. There is a couple of reasons for this but the main one is throughput. Im positive the software makes the decision that because with 80MHz channels the throughput will be higher on average than 20 or 40MHz even if this causes CCI so it chooses that.

If you experience lots of client disconnects at 40MHz then there could be a number of issues for that, one could be a bug, did you try going down to 20? Another could be the channel that was chosen, was it the same centre frequency as when it was 80MHz?