Dual Band Usage Examples

Carpeted Enterprise

Let's consider a typical, carpeted enterprise, where the goal is to provide 5-GHz Wi-Fi for the high capacity it provides. Assume the Juniper APs are already up and running, and visible in the Mist portal.

The first thing you can do is go to the Mist portal and select the Site > Radio Management page, where you can see co-channel and density metrics.

The APs have an average of 3.1 co-channel neighbors, which means that some neighboring APs are all using the same channel, which can cause co-channel congestion. The AP Density metric is 1.0, which means the APs are uniformly distributed across the site. We can conclude that this site is a great candidate for Mist RRM to auto-manage.

To enable auto-management for the 2.4-GHz radio:

1. In the Mist menu, select Organization > Wireless | RF Templates.

2. In the list of templates that appears, choose the site template (or click the Create Template button to start a new one).

3. In the 2.4 GHz Settings section, under Band Enabled, select Auto.

4. In the Dual Band Radio Settings section, also select Auto.

5. Click Save to apply your changes.

College Dormitories

College dormitories are also a good use case for RRM auto-management. Individual rooms typically have their own AP, while the AP model and standard WLAN configuration for hallways is different. Juniper AP12s are common in dorms, while AP33s or AP43s are common in the halls.

You can use the same RF template to cover both AP models. For the hallway APs, say you want to automatically convert the 2.4-GHz radio to 5-GHz wherever possible. And for the dorm rooms, you want to leave the 2.4-GHz radios as they are. You can create such an exception in the RF template for the AP12s.

Note:

You can include any number of model-specific tweaks in the within the same RF template by selecting different AP models from the default settings drop-down list.

To configure dual settings in the same template:

1. In the Mist menu, select Organization > Wireless | RF Templates.

2. In the list of templates that appears, choose the template for the dorm site you are working on.

3. In the 2.4 GHz Settings section, under Band Enabled, select Auto.

4. In the same section, click the Default Settings drop-down list and select AP 12

   . This opens (in the same pop-up window) a model-specific settings page that you will configure next.

5. Click Save to apply your changes.

Conference Rooms and Auditoriums

For areas where high client density is expected, you may want to control certain APs explicitly, for example, to enable dual band 5 GHz. For other areas, you may want to broadcast both 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz. You can use device profiles to accomplish both goals.

To configure dual-band settings for selected APs:

1. In the Mist menu, select Organization > Wireless | Device Profiles.

2. In the profiles page that appears, click Create Profile.

3. Give the profile a name, and then click Access Points links under Applies To to select the APs you want to include in the profile. These will be the APs that you to convert to dual 5-GHz. You can find APs by organization, by site, by model, by name, or MAC address.

4. After selecting the APs, click OK to close the window and attach the APs.

5. Scroll down to the Dual Band Radio Settings section and select 5GHz. If the setting conflicts with any already in place on one or more of the selected APs, you can override the local or RF template settings in favor of the device profile configuration.

   

6. When finished, scroll to the top of the page and click Create to apply the settings to the selected APs.