Guest bandwidth limit

[WTorres]

I need advice to limit the bandwidth for our guest users. Meraki school with 180 APs (MR56) 500Mb up down. 

Question, what would be the best recommended settings to allow a maximum of 100Mb to the guest users without affecting client performance.

Currently using "Per-client bandwidth limit (2Mb)

Any other ideas are welcome!

[Brash · Accepted solution]

Like you said, setting a per SSID bandwidth limit isn't a bad idea for ensuring your guests don't cause contention on your uplink.

100mbps can still impact performance. It really depends on how many guests you're expecting. 

From my experience, 2mbps is a pretty small per user limit and can cause issues with some web applications and video.

The minimum I tend to set is 5 down, 2 up.

[WTorres]

I have seen between 1500 to 2000 devices during pick hours, and have thought about setting limits per SSID since 2Mb per user seems to create performance issues

I read on a difference post that if you have 30APs and want to create a limit of 30M you will have to set SSID limit to 1Mb, 30/30 = 1Mb

Can I apply the same logic in my network?

100Mb/180 APs = 550Kbps Per-SSID bandwidth limit

[EJN]

1500-2000 devices using the guest network? That number sounds very high (not knowing what school you are / location). For example, we are a K-8 school with 700 students, about 1500 devices in our entire network, and my guest network only has 5-25 users at any given moment. We don't have guests roaming the school, and on the church side the number is small. Also, I have guest turned off on the school side during school hours.

[WTorres]

This is a High School. We created a Guest SSID with a  different VLAN just for them with limited bandwidth for their personal devices. I agree this is a very high number hence,  I'm looking to put in place all the relevant advise I can find in this community.

Thank you for input!

[Brash]

A per SSID limit is the maximum bandwidth for a given SSID, per access point.

The calculation you mentioned above works in theory, but it assumes that your guests will be equally distributed across all available Access Points, which in the real world is very unlikely.

Additionally, 500kbps bandwidth for a given user is realistically worse than having no wifi at all.

For most websites and web applications these days it will be too show to be usable.