Smart Mesh Networking Best Practices; Choosing The Right Ap Model For Your Mesh Network; Calculating The Number Of Aps Required - Ruckus Wireless ZoneDirector 1100 User Manual

Smart Mesh Networking Best Practices

Choosing the Right AP Model for Your Mesh Network

Choosing the Right AP Model for Your Mesh
Network
Ruckus Wireless supports both 802.11g and the newer, faster 802.11n APs with which to form
a mesh network. Because mesh throughput degrades with the number of hops, the best
performance can be achieved using the newer, faster 802.11n APs (ZoneFlex 7962, 7762, 7982,
etc.).
However, the 802.11g APs (ZoneFlex 2942 and ZoneFlex 2741) will also form a suitable mesh
network if your client devices do not support the newer 11n standard.
The most important point to note, however, is that the two technologies cannot be mixed in a
mesh topology. All nodes in a mesh must be 802.11n or 802.11g. You cannot mix 802.11n with
802.11g APs in a mesh. You can mix ZoneFlex 2942 with ZoneFlex 2741 in the same mesh,
because they are both 802.11g.
Additionally, dual band 11n APs can only mesh with other dual band 11n APs, and single band
11n APs can only mesh with other single band 11n APs.
In summary, build your mesh network as follows:
• Ensure that all APs are dual band 802.11n - ZoneFlex 7762, 7962, 7363, 7982
• Ensure that all APs are single band 802.11n - ZoneFlex 7341, 7343, 7321
• Ensure that all APs are 802.11g - ZoneFlex 2942 and ZoneFlex 2741
NOTE: The above restrictions apply only to AP-to-AP communication as part of a mesh, not
to AP-to-client communication. For example, 802.11g clients can connect to an 802.11n mesh,
and vice versa.

Calculating the Number of APs Required

This is an important step in planning your mesh network. You will need calculate the number
of total APs (Root APs and Mesh APs) that are needed to provide adequate coverage and
performance for a given property.
Performing a site survey to determine the coverage for your particular installation environment
is essential. Once the coverage area is sufficiently covered with Root APs to meet your
bandwidth and throughput requirements, you will need to adjust the number and placement
to compensate for APs that will serve as Mesh APs.
If you plan to support Internet grade connections for casual web browsing, plan for a design
that delivers 1Mbps of throughput in the entire coverage area. For enterprise-grade connec-
tions, plan for 10Mbps of throughput.
WiFi is a shared medium, of course, so this aggregate bandwidth will be shared amongst the
concurrent users at any given time. In other words, if the network is designed to support
10Mbps, it would support 1 user at 10Mbps, or 10 users at 1Mbps each. In reality, due to
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