Chapter 8 Wireless
NXC Series User’s Guide
144
Three channels are situated in such a way as to create almost no interference with one another if used
exclusively: 1, 6 and 11. When an AP broadcasts on any of these three channels, it should not interfere
with neighboring APs as long as they are also limited to same trio.
Figure 79 An Example Four-Channel Deployment
However, some regions require the use of other channels and often use a safety scheme with the
following four channels: 1, 4, 7 and 11. While they are situated sufficiently close to both each other and
the three so-called “safe” channels (1,6 and 11) that interference becomes inevitable, the severity of it is
dependent upon other factors: proximity to the affected AP, signal strength, activity, and so on.
Finally, there is an alternative four channel scheme for ETSI, consisting of channels 1, 5, 9, 13. This offers
significantly less overlap that the other one.
Figure 80 An Alternative Four-Channel Deployment
8.6.2 Load Balancing
Because there is a hard upper limit on an AP’s wireless bandwidth, load balancing can be crucial in
areas crowded with wireless users. Rather than let every user connect and subsequently dilute the
available bandwidth to the point where each connecting device receives a meager trickle, the load
balanced AP instead limits the incoming connections as a means to maintain bandwidth integrity.
There are three kinds of wireless load balancing available on the NXC:
Load balancing by station number limits the number of devices allowed to connect to your AP. If you
know exactly how many stations you want to let connect, choose this option.
For example, if your company’s graphic design team has their own AP and they have 10 computers,
you can load balance for 10. Later, if someone from the sales department visits the graphic design
team’s offices for a meeting and he tries to access the network, his computer’s connection is delayed,
giving it the opportunity to connect to a different, neighboring AP. If he still connects to the AP
regardless of the delay, then the AP may boot other people who are already connected in order to
associate with the new connection.
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