Tong Family

Well after that long post about RSSI levels, I learned something important which is that if you set the RSSI too high, I have too low a value then you have the following problems:

1. If you say set it to 67 which is the final value you want, then the problem is that when a client signs up for an AP, often it will appear at a much lower RSSI initially.
2. I presume there are the clients I see, MacBook for instance will first connect at -72dBm and what happens is if you get it to -67, the MacBook gets kicked off, even if the final signal is going to be much higher.

So the net is that I turned up all the APs to -67 and the result was that even though the clients would eventually set you at say -55 which is great, since they come on a 75, they will actually get dropped.

I discovered that the behavior is that you get connected, it all works and then suddenly the connection drops. Alternatively, the Mac at least will decide that the Internet doesn’t work (which it doesn’t) and say no connection.

Solution turn down RSSI to the first levels you expect usually -73/73 dBm

OK, so this is more tuning, but you have to look at the initial RSSI that a client shows up with and make sure that you have “capture”. In my case, it meant turning the RSSI for cells so that:

1. Inside Filler APs. We don’t want their 2.4GHz to leak out, so that’s why the signals are set to low and 2.4GHz is -70. It’s mainly because even at Low, it still captures quite a bit at -73dBM RSSI
2. Inside Main APs. These are the big sites, but we want a tight channel, so the 2.4 is low signal strength to equalize.
3. Boomers with a Tin Pan Reflector. Even with the reflector, you can’t turn 2.4GHz to Auto because even with -10dBM reduction in signal, it i still capturing a lot. The RSSI is turned up to -76 for 2.4GHz to maximize range outside