/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL TM Aruba RF Plan For Windows v2.0.3 User’s Guide 180 Great Oaks Blvd. Ste B San Jose, California 95119 Net www.arubanetworks.com Tel 408.227.4500 Fax 408.227.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Copyright Copyright © 1/22/04 Aruba Wireless Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Specifications in this manual are subject to change without notice. Originated in the USA. Trademarks RF Director, AirOS, Aruba 5000, and Aruba 52 are trademarks of Aruba Wireless Networks, Inc. in the United States and certain other countries. Any other trademarks appearing in this manual are the property of their respective companies. Legal Notice The use of Aruba Wireless Networks Inc.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Table of Contents Chapter 1 Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . Related Documents . . . . . . . . . . Text Conventions. . . . . . . . . . . Contacting Aruba Wireless Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. v .. v . . vi . vii The Aruba RF Plan Tool About RF Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . System Requirements . . . . . . . . . Installing and Launching RF Plan . . . Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Building Specification . . . . . .
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1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Preface This preface includes the following information: z A list of related documentation for further reading z A key to the various text conventions used throughout this manual z Aruba Wireless Networks support and service information Related Documents The following items are part of the complete documentation for the Aruba system: z Aruba AirOS User’s Guide z Aruba RF Director Starter’s Guide Preface v
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Text Conventions The following conventions are used throughout this manual to emphasize important concepts: TABLE 1 Text Conventions Type Style Description Italics This style is used to emphasize important terms and to mark the titles of books. System items This fixed-width font depicts the following: z Sample screen output z System prompts z Filenames, software devices, and certain commands when mentioned in the text.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Contacting Aruba Wireless Networks Web Site z Main Site http://www.arubanetworks.com z Support http://www.arubanetworks.com/support E-mail z Sales sales@arubanetworks.com z Support support@arubanetworks.com Telephone Numbers z Main 408-227-4500 z Fax 408-227-4550 z Sales 408-754-1201 z Support In the U.S.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL viii Aruba RF Plan v2.0.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL The Aruba RF Plan Tool RF Plan is a three-dimensional wireless deployment modeling tool that enables Network Administrators to Design an efficient Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) for their corporate environment, optimizing coverage and performance, and eliminating complicated WLAN network setup.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL About RF Plan This section introduces the various features of RF Plan, the function of each feature, and the information required by the feature. A detailed discussion of each feature is provided in “Using RF Plan” on page 8. System Requirements Aruba RF Plan requires: z Windows 2000 or Windows XP z Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later z Macromedia Flash 6.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Overview Building Specification This section of the tool allows you to construct, import, or export a virtual building including: z Physical specifications for the building. z WLAN configuration specifications including equipment requirements and radio configuration information.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL z Use the Coverage model to configure the APs in your WLAN based on desired WLAN coverage. RF Plan calculates the number of APs required based on the information you provide. z Using the Capacity model to configure the APs in your WLAN based on the number of users on your WLAN. RF Plan calculates the number of APs required based on the information you provide. z Using the Custom model, you simply specify the number of APs. 4 Aruba RF Plan v2.0.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL AM Modeling The AM Modeling page allows you to enter the information necessary to determine the number and placement of Air Monitors in your building(s), or you may explicitly specify the number of AMs you wish to deploy. Two radio buttons on the page allow you to choose the model by which the number of AMs is determined. z Use the Coverage model to configure the AMs in your WLAN based on desired WLAN coverage.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Planning The planning section of RF Plan allows you to edit the configuration of the floors in your building(s), specify areas where you don’t need coverage or where you don’t want an AP/AM deployed. The planning section will also use a sophisticated algorithm to map out the optimum placements for your APs and AMs.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL AP Plan The AP Plan page brings it all together. Once you have given RF Plan information about users, data rates, radio types, floor layouts, etc., it is ready to calculate the optimum placement of your APs. Click on the Start button and watch the APs move around as the software calculates the best place to put them. The graphical presentation will also approximate the signal coverage for any data rate you choose from a pull-down box near the top of the page.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Using RF Plan This section describes each feature and function of RF Plan in detail and provides a reference for using each of them. A guided tour through configuring a sample building and WLAN are provided in “RF Plan Tutorial” on page 33. General Screen Elements When RF Plan is started, the browser window will show the default page: the RF Plan page.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Fields z Information Fields–These fields are used only for displaying information. The data in these fields cannot be edited directly on the displayed screen. z Data Entry Fields–Boxed text fields contain user-configurable data. To enter or edit the information, click inside the field box. z Pull-down Menus–These fields allow you to select an item from a preset list. The currently selected item is displayed in the box.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Task Overview Before you begin take a minute to review this section, it explains the general steps in the order they should be taken to create a building and plan the WLAN for it. z Gather information about your building’s dimensions and floor plan. z Determine the level of coverage you want for your Access Points and Air Monitors. z Create a new building and add it’s dimensions. z Enter the parameters of your Access Point coverage.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Planning Your Plan You should collect the following information before beginning to plan your network. Having the information below readily available will expedite your planning efforts.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Step-by-Step Navigation Three important buttons appear on most of the pages in the application. Move To Next Step Save Information To File Apply Information Applying and Saving When you edit information on any of the RF Plan pages you need to apply that information before it is effective. However, applying the information doesn’t save it to your hard drive. You must click on the Save button to permanently save the information. NOTE—Always Apply.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Building List The Building list is the first page you see when you start RF Plan. This list contains all the buildings you have defined using the RF Plan software. The first time you run the application, there should be no buildings in the list. You may add, edit, and delete buildings using this window. You may also import and export buildings using the import and export buttons. Adding a New Building You may add a new building to the list in two ways.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL The Overview view shows the default values for your new building, most of which you can change in the following pages. 14 Aruba RF Plan v2.0.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Naming and Dimensioning Your Building Navigate to the Dimension view by clicking on the Building Dimension button in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Naming and dimensioning your building is as simple as entering the correct values in the text boxes in the Dimension window. z Building ID This consists of two decimal numbers separated by a dot. The first is the campus ID. The campus ID will always be “1” if there is only one campus.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Campus ID Building Number Building ID and Building Name Enter a building ID and a building name for the building where you are planning to deploy the WLAN. Exterior Dimensions and Units Specify the exterior dimensions and units of measure for your building by typing the appropriate values in the text boxes in the Dimension view page.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Export Buildings The Export Buildings page allows you to export the configuration of the WLAN you just created so that it may be imported into and used to automatically configure your Aruba switches. Files exported from RF Plan will be placed in the C:\Program Files\Aruba RF Plan\data\ directory on your hard drive. When exporting a building file it is recommended that you check the Include Images check box. When naming your exported file, be sure to give the file the .
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL NOTE—Importing any other file, including XML files from other applications, may result in unpredictable results. Any file you wish to import must be in the C:\Program Files\Aruba RF Plan\data\ path. You can not specify any other path in the RF Plan Import Buildings dialog. Modeling Access Points The AP Modeling page allows you to specify all the information necessary for RF Plan to determine the appropriate placement of your APs.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Overlap Factor The Overlap Factor is the amount of signal area overlap that you want when the APs are operating. Overlap is important if an AP fails. It allows the network to self-heal with adjacent APs powering up to assume some of the load from the failed device. Although there may be no holes in coverage in this scenario, there will likely be a loss of throughput.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Select the desired data rates from the pull-down menus for 802.11b/g and 802.11a. High data transmission rates will require an increased number of AP to be placed in your building. You should carefully evaluate your user’s data rate needs. Modeling Air Monitors The AM Modeling page allows you to specify all the information necessary for RF Plan to determine the appropriate placement of your AMs.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Laying Out Floors Go to Planning > Floors to layout a particular floor. Select the floor you wish to edit and click on it in the feature tree on the left side of the browser window. You will see a page similar to the one below.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Control Functions The Planning page contains three control functions, Zoom, Coverage, and Coverage Rate. Zoom The Zoom control sets the viewing size of the floor image. It is adjustable in finite views from 10% to 1000%. You may select a value from the pull-down zoom menu or specify a value in the text box to the left of the pull-down.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL NOTE—You will not see coverage circles displayed here until you have executed either an AP Plan or an AM Plan. Coverage Rate Adjusting the coverage rate will also affect the size of the coverage circles for AMs. Adjusting the rate values will help you understand how the coverage works in your proposed building. Floor Editor The Floor Editor allows you to specify the background image, and name the floor.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Naming You may name the floor anything you choose as long as the name is an alpha-numeric string with a maximum length of 64 characters. The name you specify will appear just to the right of the Floor Number displayed just above the background image in the Planning view. Background Images A background image (floor plan image) may be imported into RF Plan for each floor.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL You specify these areas by placing them on top of the background image using the Area Editor. Naming You may name an area using an alpha-numeric string of characters with a maximum length of 64 characters. You should give areas some meaningful name so that they are easily identified. Locating and Sizing You may specify absolute coordinates for the lower left corner and upper right corner of the box that represents the area you are defining.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Don’t Deploy areas are displayed as yellow rectangles. Access Editor The Access Editor allows you to manually create or modify a suggested access point. Naming RF Plan automatically names APs using the default convention “ap number”. It assigns the number starting at 1 and increasing by one for each new AP. When you manually create an AP that new AP is then assigned the next “ap” number in sequence and added to the bottom of the suggested AP list.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Location 262 ft. The physical location of the AP is specified by X-Y coordinates beginning at the lower left corner of the display area. The numbers you specify in the X and Y text boxes are whole units. The X coordinates increase as a point moves up the display and the Y coordinates increase as they move from left to right across the display. Y 98 0,0 126 X 418 ft. Fixed Fixed APs don’t move when RF Plan executes the positioning algorithm.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL 802.11 Channels The 802.11a and 802.11b/g channel drop down menus allow you to select from the available channels. NOTE—The available channels will vary depending on the regulatory domain (country) in which the device is being operated. 802.11a channels begin at channel 34 at a frequency of 5.170 MHz and increase in 20MHz steps through channel 161 at 5.805 Mhz. 802.11b/g channels begin at 1 and are numbered consecutively through 14. The frequencies begin at 2.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL AP Plan The AP Plan feature uses the information entered in the modeling pages to locate access points in the building(s) you described. Running the Algorithm Initialize Initialize the Algorithm by clicking on the Initialize button. This makes an initial placement of the access points and prepares RF Plan for the task of determining the optimum location for each of the APs. As soon as you click the Initialize button you will see the AP symbols appear on the floor plan.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Colored circles around the AP symbols on the floor plan indicate the approximate coverage of the individual AP and the color of the circle represents the channel on which the AP is operating. The circles appear when you select an approximate coverage value on one of the Floors pages. You may also use click on an AP icon and drag it to manually reposition it. Start Click on the Start button to launch the optimizing algorithm.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL The Suggested AP Table lists the coordinates, power, location, power setting, and channel for each of the APs that are shown in the floor plan. AM Plan The AM Plan feature calculates the optimum placement for your air monitors (AMs). Running the Algorithm Initialize Initialize the Algorithm by clicking on the Initialize button. This makes an initial placement of the air monitors and prepares RF Plan for the task of determining the optimum location for each of the AMs.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Viewing the Results Viewing the results of the AM Plan feature is similar to that for the AP Plan feature. The results of optimizing algorithm may be viewed two ways: graphically and in a table of suggested AMs. You may obtain information about a specific AP by placing the cursor over its symbol. An information box will appear containing information about the exact location, PHY type, channel, power, etc.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL RF Plan Tutorial This section will guide you through the process of creating a building and populating it with access points and air monitors using RF Plan. You can use the RF Plan portion of RF Director or you can use the stand-alone Aruba RF Plan product. NOTE—If you haven’t yet installed RF Plan, you should do so now. See “Installing and Launching RF Plan” on page 2. 1 Launch RF Plan. Select: Start > All Programs > Aruba Offline RF Plan> Aruba RF Plan.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Create A Building In this section we will create a building using the information supplied in the planning table. 1 Click the New Building button. The Overview page appears. 2 Click Save. 3 Click the Building Dimension button. The Specification page appears. 4 Type the following information in the text boxes. Text Box Information z Building ID 1.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Model the Access Points You will now determine how many access points are required to cover your building with a specified data transfer rate and overlap. In this example we will use the Coverage Model and make the following assumptions about the performance of our WLAN. z Radio Types: a/b/g z Overlap factor: Medium (150%) z 802.11a desired rate: 48 Mbps z 802.11b desired rate: 48 Mbps 1 Select “801.11 a|b|g” from the Radio Type pull-down box.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Add and Edit a Floor You will now add floor plans to your floors and specify “Don’t Deploy” and “Don’t Care” areas for each floor. In this section you will: 1 z Add a background image floor plan for each floor. z Name the floors. z specify Don’t Deploy and Don’t Care areas. Click on the Edit Floor link at the right of the Floor 1 indicator. Edit Floor Link 2 Type Entrance Level in the Name box of the Floor Editor Dialog.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL 4 Click Apply. You should see something like this: Repeat the process above for Floor 2. 5 Click on the Edit Floor link at the right of the Floor 2 indicator. 6 Type Second Level in the Name box of the Floor Editor Dialog. 7 Use the Browse button to locate the background image for the 1st floor. The file will be located in C:\Program Files\Aruba RF Plan\Tutorial\tutorial floor 2.jpg 8 Click Apply. 9 Click Save in the Planning window.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Create A Don’t Care Area 1 Go back to the AP Planning page. Click on AP Plan in the Feature Tree at the left side of the browser window. 2 Click the “New” link in the Areas box located below the lower left corner of the floor plan in the AP Planning window. This opens the Area Editor. 3 Type Shipping and Receiving in the Name text box in the Area Editor. 4 Select “Don’t Care” from the Type pull-down menu box. 5 Click the Apply button.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL 9 Click Save. Create A Don’t Deploy Area 10 Click the “New” link in the Areas box located below the lower left corner of the floor plan in the AP Planning window. 11 Type Lobby in the Name text box in the Area Editor. Select “Don’t Deploy” from the Type pull-down menu box. 12 Click the Apply button. Notice that an yellow box appears near the center of the floor plan. 13 Use your mouse (or other pointing device) to place the cursor over the box.
1/22/04 Review Draft—CONFIDENTIAL Running the AP Plan In this section you will run the algorithm that searches for the best place to put all your access points. You might want to zoom in on the floor plan. Zoom using the Zoom pull-down near the top of the AP Planning page, or type a zoom factor in the text box at the left of the pull-down and press the enter key on your keyboard. Try entering a zoom factor of 400.
