AP Shaping

[CaseyBrown]

Sorry for my lack of knowledge. Is there a way to direct/give more bandwidth to a specific AP for a duration of time? Our issue...we have three AP's in the cafe that run two desktop devices for our lunch program. The students laptops, cell phones, mobile devices, etc are connecting to the AP's which in turn is slowing down the 2 desktop devices that are needing it the most. Was curious if we could block other devices or just direct the 2 desktops to certain AP's and allow them the majority of the traffic for a few hours.

Any help would be appreciated.

[NFL0NR]

You can have different policies setup by SSID's so that you could restrict bandwidth to the users via group policy

[PhilipDAth]

There are many solutions.

You could create a new SSID for the desktops (and attach the desktops to that specific SSID) and then limit the bandwidth of the other SSID.

You you use tags, and put the "general" SSID on all AP's except the one in question, and put the "desktop" SSID on the AP in question.

Assuming that an AP is near the desktops; you could increase the minimum allowed connection speed on the APs.  This would encourage other users to more aggresively roam to a closer AP and away from the AP near the desktops.

You could attach a schedule to the "general" SSID turning it off at a specific time of the day and leave the "desktop" SSID on.

[CaseyBrown · Accepted solution]

Thank you for the kind response PhilipDAth.  

The idea gives me another piece to the puzzle, but I don't believe it's the last piece.  The "desktop" AP's will be used the other 8 hours of the day needing the general SSID (lunch vendor goes away, AP's now need to serve the school).  So adding a new SSID would neuter the AP's for the rest of day correct?  The AP's in question are in a common cafe area where the students gather.  Unless there is a way to "switch" the SSID's for a time period I'm not sure if this is the best solution.

My apologies for my lack of knowledge.  I am used to a shaper that allows percentages to certain IP's and MAC addresses.  So I am trying to re-shape my thinking.  Pun intended.

[WadeAlsup]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you are under the assumption that you cannot broadcast multiple SSID's from any single AP? You should be able to have both SSID's broadcasting from any AP. Then you can setup a schedule for the "Lunchtime" users SSID that they will connect to under the SSID Availability page in your dashboard. Under the Firewall & traffic shaping page for that same SSID, you can set individual client bandwidth limits, or a limit for the entire SSID per AP. I think that would be the way to go unless you want to setup some more in-depth Group Policies.