Customers / Access points per high site..

Heya,

What’s the most Access points / Customers any of you have per High site?

One of my sites has three 120 Degrees 5.7Ghz Access points with plus minus 135 customers per Access point and we’re starting to run into performance issues. Will it be as simple as just adding aditional access points or am I getting close to the limit?

Thanks in advance
-steph

What frequency APs are you using?

What kind of speeds are you offering your customers?

5.8Ghz and anything from 256Kbps to 1024Kbps shared.

Are these PTP100 or PTP430APs? Advantage/Non-Advantage?

PTM100 Advantage ACCESS points … the backhaul is a PTP600 Lite 5.4Ghz.

Sorry, yes I meant PMP not PTP.

We have some 2.4Ghz Advantage Access points with 50-60 SMs connected offering about the same package as you.

I would imagine you could have support about the same per 5.7Ghz AP with those bandwidth requirements.
One question would be are you giving sustained 1024kbps download for many SMs?

I actaully try and stay away from any sustained values as far as posible :)… What I mean by performance issues , is that we’re struggling to add any new customers to those access points … registration takes very long so I’m thinking we’re most likely getting to the limits of the Access points. I know Moto claims that an access point can take up to 200 customers but I doubt that you’ll get any practical performance out of them if you utilize them fully.

Would it be practical to install a second access point servicing the same sector ?

Have you gone through the Session Status page on the access points and tried to make sure the received signal strength (dBm) for all the SMs are as close to each other as possible?
For example you don’t want some to be as strong as -53 and others at -79. You want them all to be ideally as close as possible but I try to be within 10dB for all of them.
If you have a big disparity for many of the SMs then this cause you trouble in trying to connect new SMs.

Are you using Prizm to manage this gear? If so, how is your Bandwidth Service Plan configured? What do the traffic graphs show for the AP?

How many control slots are set up? Are all clients in 2X?

Yes , the whole network is controlled by Prizm … Not many customers with an Advantage SM (X2) , around 5% of our total network. We don’t really have any problems on those sites other then that things isn’t as quick as it used to be … I also understand that my question most likely has the same answer as “How long is a piece of string” but using the numbers below, plus minus how many customers would one be able to stack on a high site …

Thanks pcpolo , that’s a pretty good idea. How do I get an SM to transmit a few dBms less? Think there’s only two setting , normal / low power.


Customer Layout…
50% : 512Kbps Service Plan
30% : 768Kbps Service Plan
15% : 1024Kbps Service Plan
5% : 2048Kbp Service Plan

It your only choices are Low & Normal power then you’ll only be able to change to Low Power for the ones that real close to the tower.
You might want to have a tech on site just in case the radio does not reconnect to the access point so they can change it back to Normal Power.

as long as you GPS sync you can change your sectors out to 6 APs, just set the APs that are back to back to each other on the same channel, turn on your auto power balancing in the radio tab and welcome to double bandwidth…

we have 12 900s on the same tower using 3 channels, and we have done that a few times without any problems, but Sync and careful RF planning is a MUST.

6 horizontal and 6 verical