Wireless LAN Installation Considerations

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Clients identify an infrastructure WLAN through the network name or service set identifier (SSID) configured on the access point.

• SSID can be up to 32 bytes in length
  • should only use ASCII letters and digits plus the hyphen and underscore characters
    • for maximum compatibility
• When configuring an access point, choose whether to use the same or different network names for both frequency bands
  • If you use the same SSID
    • the access point and client device will use a probe to select the band with the strongest signal
  • If you configure separate names
    • the user can choose which network and band to use.
• For each frequency band, you also need to select the operation mode
  • determines compatibility with older standards and support for legacy client devices
  • Supporting older devices can reduce performance for all stations
• for each frequency band, need to configure the channel number and whether to use channel bonding
  • If there are multiple access points whose ranges overlap
    • they should be configured to use nonoverlapping channels to avoid interference
  • An access point can be left to autoconfigure the best channel
    • does not always work well
  • can configure wide channels (bonding) for more bandwidth
    • has the risk of increased interference if there are multiple nearby wireless networks
  • Channel bonding may only be practical in the 5 GHz band
    • depending on the wireless site design