[NEBULA] what DCS doing butr do all AP in a site "sense" each other

Ubay

I kkow what DCS doing butr do all AP in a site "sense" each other and will try to adjust theyr transmit power to obtain a better coverage and avoid interference?

Zyxel_Dean

Hi @ubay,
Welcome to the forum .

The NAPs in a site when DCS starts, each NAP will have a random time countdown before initiating the channel selection process. This is to prevent NAP from ending with the same results. 
The DCS feature does not adjust transmit power, the power is related to your output power settings and the power limitations of your country regulations.

-Dean

Peppino

Dean,

I guess ubay was referring to something else. He was asking about an automatic setting of transmit power in an AP, as Aruba does in their Instant APs, called ARM.
Is Zyxel planning something like this?

Nebula_Bayardo

Hi @Peppino

Auto power adjustment seems to be a useful feature, agree. However, we haven't implemented this feature in any of our Zyxel access points because it requires a really clean and ideal environment where the APs are the only radio signals being transmitted. 

For example, the feature is used in a hotel wireless network. 
Ideally, the AP will detect the signal of the other APs and adapt its power. Then, as it might be really common,  a hotel guest enables the portable hotspot option of his cell phone which is also generating some radio signals. The AP will detect this radio signals from the guest's phone and will reduce the power, affecting other areas where now there's no any wireless coverage at all.

Not only cell phones' WiFi signal but also others AP's signals will affect the power adjustment. The feature will perfectly work only when you have no other interference signals.
We suggest doing a survey instead, to check which is the best settings for your APs and manually adjust the power. Takes a bit more effort but it might be a permanent solution.

Peppino

Hi Bayardo,

Let me disagree here... You are right, but only if we are looking to these as a bunch of independently installed APs.
But as long as they are deployed as Nebula APs, or a cluster of APs, where there is some sort of intelligence like it was with the hybrid controller in the past, nevertheless with a controller, the whole thing becomes a group of managed APs, and the "manager" or controller is aware of the topology, the coverage and power levels. In this respect it should not decrease it's power when a tethering hotspot pops up, but rather monitor it's own APs coverage only, and try to maintain a channel blanket as needed, for it's own served clients. A hotel client wants hotel wifi, and will not connect to his neigbour's hotspot, as he will not have a PSK for that, so decreasing the hotel APs power will affect reception parameters of those staying in the surrounding rooms.
For interference there are other solutions, but definitely not decreasing the EIRP because of an unknown hotspot. None of the leading solutions work like this.
 

Nebula_Bayardo

Hi Peppino,

Agree that it's possible, but it requires a deep study for an adequate implementation. As this is mainly a device feature, not only has to be considered for Nebula but also other controller deployments, we need to spend some more time to come up with the best design possible. 
I recommend you and @ubay to create a post in the idea section and try to make it popular so we could increase the priority based on our customers needs.