Dynamic Channel

With dynamic channel selection, the AP changes the channel when it detects a too high interference or noise floor for a certain amount of time (about one second).

As this is done continously and the channel is only changed when necessary, there is no need to select time frames when it should scan.

Hello, another question regarding this.  When the AP decides it needs to change its channel, I have to imagine its gonna kick the associated clients off while it changes the channel.  If thats the case, I guess that would call more for a feature request of being able to select a time frame that the AP does a scan (Off hours).  Let me know if I'm not thinking this correctly.

Thanks

Hi DMR188,

there are currently no feature request site for sophos cloud available so sophos want to create your feature request topic in the wireless board.

on utm this feature is available. i think this feature will come to sophos cloud wireless soon, because sophos will implements all features of utm wireless.

greetings

Yeah, we use time based schedules on XG/SG customers and am familiar with it.  As far as adding UTM features, I think we're well past that.  Central has 10x the features and management compared to XG/SG.  I was just more curious exactly how the Dynamic Channel works.  As mentioned before it sounds like theres a reason they didn't put time based schedules in, I was just wondering what happens to the clients when the AP detects too much interference/noise and decides to change its channel.

I appreciate the feedback.

Thanks

Hi,

a standard pattern we see when only having automatic channel selection (happening at AP start) is that for 5 Ghz, many APs select channels in the non-DFS range. In order to utilise DFS, the AP has to scan for a certain time to determine whether it is allowed to use the channels. With a schedule as we have it in UTM it would mean that the APs keep a suboptimal configuration for a longer time which would result in an unpleasant experience.

Every time the AP changes the channel, all clients are disassociated. It should usually take one a few seconds for a client to associate to a new AP, sometimes even faster.

With a reaction to noise levels, there might be some fluctuations in the beginning but this should resolve itself after a certain time. We think that this simplifies the configuration. We still see the need to some customisation options, but we have to find a way to satisfy both the need for an ad-hoc working configuration and minimised interruptions at runtime. Furthermore, we investigated options to make this more graceful for the clients that are connected. We track this internally with CWIFI-4832 .

Kind regards,

Dirk

Hallo Dirk, ich sehe du bist ja aus Karlsruhe, weshalb ich direkt Deutsch schreibe. Wird der Kanal gewechselt, erhalten alle verbundenen Clients einen Disconnect wie du ja schon richtig schreibst. Genau aus diesem Grund wünschen sich einige Administratoren diese Funktion (auch unsere Kunden haben dies bereits angesprochen) um in Zeitbereichen diesen Scan durchzuführen, an denen ein disconnect keine negative auswirkung hat. Ob der user es dann nutzt oder nicht sei dahingestellt, aber ich denke ein Feature names "timebased scan" sowie "dynamic frequency" wäre da angebracht.

lg x.cr3w

Hallo,

Danke fuer das Feedback. ein solches Feature werden wir mit Sicherheit implementieren, befindet sich aber aktuell nicht in Bearbeitung, daher kommt es eher mittelfristig. Bei größeren Installationen wuerde ich darüber hinaus so oder so eine genaue Kanalplanung machen, da weder Signalstärke noch Kanalbreite abgedeckt werden sowie stabile Kanäle da wünschenswert sind.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

Dirk Bolte

Gebe ich dir vollkommen recht. Befindet sich das Büro in welchem Wlan implementiert wird aber in einem hochfrequentierten Bürogebäude, bei welchem man auf nachbarn/mietfirmen keinen einfluss hat, macht der automatische scan schonwieder sinn :).

Gebe ich dir vollkommen recht. Befindet sich das Büro in welchem Wlan implementiert wird aber in einem hochfrequentierten Bürogebäude, bei welchem man auf nachbarn/mietfirmen keinen einfluss hat, macht der automatische scan schonwieder sinn :).

Auf jeden Fall.