User's Manual

Wireless Array
Configuring the Wireless Array 295
performance possible. The benefit is dramatic. Consider a properly
designed network (having -70db or better everywhere), where virtually
every client should have a 54Mbps connection. In this case, broadcasts
and multicasts will all go out at 54Mbps vs. the standard rate. Thus, with
broadcast rate optimization on, broadcasts and multicasts use between
2% and 10% of the bandwidth that they would in Standard mode.
When set to Standard (the default), broadcasts are sent out at the lowest
basic rate only — 6 Mbps for 5GHz clients, or 1 Mbps for 2.4GHz clients.
The option you select here is applied to all IAPs.
25. Load Balancing: The Xirrus Wireless Array supports an automatic load
balancing feature designed to distribute wireless stations across multiple
radios rather than having stations associate to the closest radios with the
strongest signal strength, as they normally would. In wireless networks,
the station decides to which radio it will associate. The Array cannot
actually force load balancing, however the Array can “encourage”
stations to associate in a more uniform fashion across all of the radios of
the Array. This option enables or disables active load balancing between
the Array IAPs. For an in-depth discussion, see the Xirrus Station Load
Balancing Application Note in the Xirrus Resource Center
.
If you select On and an IAP is overloaded, that IAP will send an “AP
Full” message in response to Probe, Association, or Authentication
requests. This prevents determined clients from forcing their way onto
overloaded IAPs. Note that some clients are so determined to associate to
a particular IAP that they will not try to associate to another IAP, and thus
they never get on the network.
Choose Off to disable load balancing.
26. ARP Filtering: Address Resolution Protocol finds the MAC address of a
device with a given IP address by sending out a broadcast message
requesting this information. ARP filtering allows you to reduce the
proliferation of ARP messages by restricting how they are forwarded
across the network.
You may select from the following options for handling ARP requests: