Would be interested in starting a discussion on what people consider to be "installable" customers and how they came about settling on those values. Yes, I realize we would all like every client to be -60 (as an example) with 35+ SNR and MCS that holds 15 all the time. But we are living in the real world and that is not realistic for us - hills / vallies, trees,...
We typically shoot for -65, with 30+SNR and MCS 13+ for our 5GHz installs. We will let those numbers drop a bit in the 2.4 GHz band. However, recently did some testing with signals closer to -70, still with decent SNR/MCS and see that we are pushing through the plans we offer without issue. These are NOT heavily loaded sectors however and I feel dropping the standards will cause issues even once they become moderately loaded.
What are the rest of you doing? Thanks in advance!
As a quick and dirty rule of thumb we use:
- For 5ghz (which we put higher end clients on) we shoot for an SnR of 20dB or higher... minimum signal is -75.
- For 2.4ghz (which we put low end/low bandwidth plans on), we shoot for an SnR of 15dB or higher... minimum signal is -75
- For 3.65 (which we put higher end clients on) we shoot for an SnR of 20dB or higher... minimum signal is -75
- For 900mhz (which we put low end/low bandwidth plans on), we shoot for an SnR of 10dB or higher
It also depends on what sort of spectrum you have available... don't have a lot of spectrum? you're going to want to be using more stringent SnR requirements to keep your AP density higher. Have tons of spectrum and no competition? You can play fast and loose with the SnR, and just hang more sectors when you need to.
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Appreciate the feedback / tips. We have been through MANY winters and our installers are very good at looking to the future for what might be an issue when we have leaves on the trees. Anybody else care to share their installation guidelines?
Eric: What sort of density are you expecting and/or actually seeing with the guildelines that you are using? Those numbers soft of scare me to be honest.
@Larry Weidig wrote:
Eric: What sort of density are you expecting and/or actually seeing with the guildelines that you are using? Those numbers soft of scare me to be honest.
If you want a better idea of how to plan for your sector load and over subscription ratios, see THIS post.