D-Link DWS-4026 Product Manual - Page 420

D-Link Unified Access System Software User Manual 12/10/09 Field Load Utilization Maximum Clients Automatic Channel Automatic Power Initial Power RF Scan Other Channels RF Scan Sentry Supported Channels Table 260: Radio Settings (Cont.) Description This field allows you to set a threshold for the percentage of network bandwidth utilization allowed on the radio. Once the level you specify is reached, the AP stops accepting new client associations. Enter a percentage of utilization from 1 to 100. Specify the maximum number of stations allowed to associate with this access point at any one time. You can enter a value between 0 and 200. The channel defines the portion of the radio spectrum that the radio uses for transmitting and receiving. The range of channels and the default channel are determined by the Mode of the radio interface. When the AP boots, each AP radio scans the RF area for occupied channels and selects a channel from the available non-interfering or clear channels. However, channel conditions can change during operation. Enabling the Automatic Channel makes the radio of APs assigned to this profile eligible for auto-channel selection. You can automatically or manually run the auto-channel selection algorithm to allow the Unified Switch to adjust the channel on APs as WLAN conditions change. By default, the global auto-channel mode is set to manual. To enable the automatic channel selection mode, go to the WLAN > Administration > AP Management > RF Management page and select Fixed or Interval for the Channel Plan mode. You can also run the automatic channel selection algorithm manually from the Manual Channel Plan page. Note: If you assign a static channel to a radio of an AP in the Valid AP database or on the Advanced AP Management page, the AP radio will not participate in the auto-channel selection. The power level affects how far an AP broadcasts its RF signal. If the power level is too low, wireless clients will not detect the signal or experience poor WLAN performance. If the power level is too high, the RF signal might interfere with other APs within range. Automatic power uses a proprietary algorithm to automatically adjust the RF signal to broadcast far enough to reach wireless clients, but not so far that it interferes with RF signals broadcast by other APs. The power level algorithm increases or decreases the power level in 10% increments based on presence or absence of packet retransmission errors. The automatic power algorithm will not reduce the power below the number you set in the initial power field. By default, the power level is 100%. Therefore, even if you enable the automatic power, the power of the RF signal will not decrease. The power level is a percentage of the maximum transmission power for the RF signal. The access point can perform RF scans to collect information about other wireless devices within range and then report this information to the Unified Switch. If you select the Scan Other Channels option, the radio periodically moves away from the operational channel to scan other channels. Enabling this mode causes the radio to interrupt user traffic, which may be noticeable with voice connections. When the Scan Other Channels option is cleared, the AP scans only the operating channel. Select this option to allow the radio to operate in sentry mode. When the RF Scan Sentry option is selected, the radio primarily performs dedicated RF scanning. The radio passively listens for beacons and traffic exchange between clients and other access points but does not accept connections from wireless clients. In sentry mode, all VAPs are disabled. Networks that deploy sentry APs or radios can detect devices on the network quicker and perform more thorough security analysis. In this mode, the radio switches from one channel to the next. The length of time spent on each channel is controlled by the scan duration. The default scan duration is 10 milliseconds. This field displays the channels that are supported for the radio mode currently selected on the page and for the country configured on the Global Wireless Settings page. Page 420 Basic Setup Document 34CSFP6XXUWS-SWUM100-D7