ePMP and the use of SSID in a four (4) sector deployment

Products ePMP
1

Hi,

What is the best practice when deploying a four (4) sector or muliple sectors and the use off SSID on the ePMP platform?  I know for the PMP100 FSK series, it was suggested / it was a  good idea to use different colour codes.  So how should one setup their ePMP APs SSID , for example,  should we use:-

  1.  different SSIDs for each sector AP (antenna) in an ABAB reuse design.  For example, SSID names are unique to each sector, "NE-Sector", "NW-Sector","SW-Sector", "SE-Sector"
  2. or, should we use two (2) SSIDs, same SSID for each AB access point/sector.  For example, the SSID names would be for the "A" sector, the SSID would be "5GHz_Sector_A", and the "B" sector would have the SSID name "5GHz_Sector B". And the SSID names would repeat based on the ABAB reuse

Or, can you deploy the same SSID (singular) name throughout the enter ePMP APs on the same tower/s?

What are the advantages and/or disadvantages?

Regards.

2

In regards to a Labeling scheme, My practice is to name each of the 4 AP's with a designator identifier, ie: site or tower name / abbreviation and that followed by a individual  number from 1 thru 4 on each AP. This will allow you to "look" at the tower from a SU side and determine which AP would be the best selection. This will also aide in providing the field person with a moderate range of performance level as to where the AP are at their best rssi when looking at the 0 to 360 performance.

Identifying the AP's is also critical from the office end when looking at a link or SU issue so you know who is on what AP and tower site.

I keep a spreadsheet in the field naming all towers, tower AP ssid's and their general direction. For example:

Tower 1 AP 1 NE

Tower 1 AP 2 SE

Tower 1 AP 3 SW

Tower 1 AP 4 NW

I also add the the spreadsheet each customer name, Tower AP number, SU Serial number, MAC address and link numbers (rssi) and any special notes, so that should a AP go down, anyone in the field or office, can rebuild the AP database to reload the AP without too much effort in a worse case scenario. Obviously your BMU software may provide all this data, but in a back up measure, it's a few minutes of time vs a million mile an hour nightmare.

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3

Best Practice is to give each AP its own SSID. For SM pre-configuration you can simply configure your common security settings in the "Security" tab on the Subscriber Module and it will attempt to connect to any ePMP AP with the matching key. No need to pre-populate that list of APs in the radio tab.

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