Cisco Cisco Prime Network Control System Appliance Leaflet
Q&A
© 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Page 1 of 5
Prepare Your Network for Mobile Devices and
Tablets with Cisco Wireless
Tablets with Cisco Wireless
Q. Is it recommended to keep voice services on 802.11a, or is it okay to run both voice and data on 802.11
b/g/n?
A. Cisco recommends deploying voice on a 5-GHz band, where there is a significant increase in non-overlapping
channels and much less interference.
Q. With wireless carriers offering LTE, 4
th
Generation, WiMAX, and so on, on most devices, will the
demand on the Wi-Fi network go down?
A. Not at all. In fact, many service providers would like to offload Long Term Evolution (LTE) and 3
rd
Generation/4
th
Generation (3G/4G) devices to Wi-Fi for non-voice traffic. Instead we will see continued growth
in parallel to next-generation mobile operator technologies and the mobile operator technologies (LTE, 3G/4G)
dedicated for voice. Bandwidth for high-definition (HD) rich media continues to outstrip the multiuser
capabilities of LTE, 4G, and so on. 802.11n provides the speed needed for advancing rich media applications.
Also, Wi-Fi has more than 20 times the throughput and 40 times the spectrum capacity than cellular
technologies. Cellular throughput is shared across the tens or hundreds of users within the coverage of the
macro tower.
Q. Why does Cisco Radio Resource Management perform its power calculations based on 1-Mbps data
rate even if that data rate is disabled?
A. We use the 1-Mbps data rate to get the maximum possible reach out of our encrypted access-point to access-
point-neighbor packets. They do not consume much bandwidth and give us the visibility to understand the
attenuation between all the access points that can hear each other.
Q. Is it better to keep only native 802.11n clients on the 5-GHz channels, rather than allowing legacy
802.11a clients too?
A. This is a good deployment strategy for three reasons: 1) More non-overlapping channels for higher network
capacity; 2) availability of 40-MHz channels for 300-MB data rates; and 3) much less interference. You can
use Cisco
®
BandSelect technology to help move clients to 5 GHz.
Q. We have used a 802.11n access point, but still only get 54 Mbps. What else do we need in our
infrastructure to get 802.11n speeds on our laptops?
A. First, check to be sure you have Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) enabled. Check that the 802.11n data rates are
enabled and whether you are operating in 5 GHz. Be sure that 40 MHz is enabled, and check client capability
and similar attributes. To reach 802.11n speeds, you have to use Advanced Encryption Services (AES)
encryption (or no encryption). Test by turning off encryption to isolate the problem. Then check client settings
to make sure that the client supports two 802.11n spatial streams and that the high throughput (HT) settings
are on.