Cisco Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series 7600 Series Wireless Services Module (WiSM) Weißbuch

Wireless LAN Design Guide for High Density 

Client Environments in Higher Education   

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Best practices include:

•  Use external USB adapters for survey equipment.
•  The software can usually be licensed to the adapter and moved from platform to platform, keeping the measurement tool 

consistent. 

•  Always use the same driver software whether from the device manufacturer or from the tool manufacturer on all tools being 

used to quantify results in a given environment.

•  When updating a driver, compare the results between the new and old driver. This will help make sense of older data sets.
•  Record what adapters, platforms, and driver software were used when collecting data sets. This will make remembering the 

details later much easier if the need arises.

Infrastructure Readiness 

The wired LAN should remove all protocol traffic not required by the applications on the WLAN endpoints. The wired LAN should 
be designed to maintain the quality of service (QoS) configurations of the WLAN. The LAN should be designed to support a burst 
of authentication traffic. 

SSID Assignment

Users connect via distinct SSIDs for each user segment, with each SSID being segregated to its own respective VLAN. This 
wireless connection is secured by respective wireless authentication protocols. Table 9 provides an example of SSIDs that are 
used in universities.

,7

,QWHUQDOWHFKQLFDOPDQDJHPHQW

)DFXOW\

8QLYHUVLW\HPSOR\HHV

6WXGHQW

6WXGHQW

*XHVW

3XEOLFLQWHUQHWXVHUVDQGJXHVWV

Note: The number of SSIDs should be kept to a minimum to avoid a negative performance impact because of excessive 
management traffic. Each SSID requires a separate beacon message that will be broadcast at the lowest mandatory data rate 
and can significantly impact the performance in a high density design.