Juniper wlan highdensity_webinar

MISSION CRITICAL WLAN IN HIGH DENSITY ENVIRONMENTS

2 Copyright © 2013 Juniper Networks, Inc. www.juniper.net


INTRODUCTION

Lane Timmons Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center

Joe Bilbro Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center

Phil Belanger Novarum

Ken Biba Novarum

Tim McCarthy Juniper Networks


AGENDA

1. Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center

High Density Problems and Solutions

2. Juniper High Density BYOD Testing with Novarum

Test event in Sunnyvale, CA

Test Results and Observations

3. Key Takeaways


TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER

Major American research university

Founded 1969, West Texas

Over 10,000 users with multiple devices

4,000 students, 6,000 faculty and staff

Challenge

Students unhappy with wireless access

Legacy 802.11bg WLAN network

Need 802.11n WLAN to support high density requirements

Students connect 2-4 laptops, tablets, smartphones

Key need: high density

High quality wireless service in dense university environments


Result: Juniper delivered the best end user experience

LIVE VENDOR EVALUATION

Setup – high density client environment

Vendors configured/calibrated system prior to test

200 students invited to participate in evaluations during lunch hour

Typical large classroom setting

Each student ran tests with 2-4 wireless devices

Multiple tests performed: web, youtube video, news site/data, HD

streaming video

Evaluation

Qualitative assessment of end-user experience for each data type:

good, average, bad

Final question comparing experience to home network


NEXT STEPS

Juniper selected for new high density 11n network

Partnered with Juniper, designed for high density locations

Initial rollout 1300 APs, completed 2013

Continuing to deploy additional APs to service high density area


5

3

4

2

1

POLL QUESTION #1

The highest amount of users at one location that my

organization regularly provides Wireless LAN services to is:

10-20

20-50

50-100

100-250

250+


WHY TEST HIGH DENSITY

BYOD trend is driving increased density

Device diversity and high density is the new reality

Customer deployments are getting bigger and becoming mission critical

Be confident your WLAN vendor understands High Density


CHALLENGES

How to narrow the test scope to something meaningful

No test scenario is perfect, how to get as close as possible

Testing Wi-Fi with real devices in real world settings is hard

RF is messy, how to get reproducible test results

High Density Wi-Fi

High Density is the new normal Wireless is the edge network for enterprises

Explosion of mobile devices

BYOD

Cellular offload

WLANs are being pushed to their limits demand for wireless access is exploding

technology is improving but spectrum is limited

Core Wi-Fi technology is very mature

Must design WLAN deployments for high density

Subtle changes in system design can make large differences in system performance

11

Copyright Novarum 2013

Testing Approach

Test with real clients in a real environment Over the air testing

Typical clients

Repeatable tests Ixia Chariot scripts

High Throughput TCP tests push system to limit

Consistent configuration for WLAN infrastructure Same locations, channels and power levels

Consistent configuration for clients

Tools to observe system behavior Packet capture, spectrum analyzer

Controller system logs, Chariot results

12


Important Metrics

System performance is affected by subtle differences in high density WLAN features and configuration Load Balancing and Band Steering

How are clients distributed across the APs?

Utilization

What is channel utilization? Are all channels used effectively?

Fairness

Are all clients getting fair access to the system?

Error Rate

Retry Rate

If retries become too high system can collapse.

Client behavior

Do laptops get better service than smartphones?

13


Test Setup

Facility

1000 seat auditorium in Sunnyvale, CA

Clean RF environment

Configured for 300 seats in theatre arrangement

Client Devices

300 real devices

Mix of iDevices, PCs, Macs, Android, tablets and smartphones

Traffic generation tool installed on each device

Network

6 WLA532 3x3 3-stream 11n APs

2 WLC880 controllers

EX Virtual Chassis

SRX Cluster

14


Client Configurations

A variety of clients - smartphones, laptops, tablets

Three different client populations - All, Half, Third

Auditorium style seating - row letter, seat number

Each client machine is assigned a name and location that never changes, same client in same seat

Evenly distributed throughout the space

15


Channel Configuration

Overall Results

Maximum aggregate throughput was 483 MBPs for this configuration

We saw throughput over 625 Mbps when using more 5 GHz channels

For the tests generating the highest load, “BiDir” and “Max Thruput”, peak system capacity with half client load

Throughput declined with All Clients

Gradual decline

Stable system performance at the highest load

16


#

Clients

BiDir

Thruput

Max

Thruput

Low

Thruput

All 302 423 433 311

Half 156 479 483 312

Third 95 454 442 231

Detailed Results Max Throughput, Half Clients

Chariot throughput results

Each line is throughput results for a TCP stream

156 clients with 221 separate streams in this test

Low error rate

Most streams under 4 Mbps

Throughput fairly even across all of the clients/streams

17


Detailed Results Max Throughput, Half Clients

Channelyzer screen captures show channel usage

All 5 GHz channels are being used

Channel 165 is shared by 2 APs and is only 20 MHz

Band steering worked well

2.4 GHz channels were almost fully utilized in all of the tests

Channel 44+ had higher utilization

also had higher retry rate...

18


Overall Observations

Error rate rises with increasing client load as expected

Retry rate remains fairly flat with increasing client load

This is surprising and positive

System is stable under very high load

Some clients have higher retry rates

Win7 and Win8 had very high retry rates on most tests

Mobile clients surprisingly good

19



3

4

2

1

POLL QUESTION #2

The performance of my current wireless network is:

Excellent

Average

Adequate

Poor


JUNIPER HIGH DENSITY TEST TRIVIA

302 clients

1.5 days to setup

3 days of testing

.5 day to tear down

~30 perf tests per vendor, 3 vendors, over 100 test runs

Typical 30sec packet capture of one 5Ghz channel = ~500,000 packets

12GB of compressed log files, packet captures, script output


WHAT WE LEARNED

Clients in high density environments, under the most demanding

load, can still access the Juniper network to get their work done

Major network failures did not cause any disruption to the

WLAN network

Many factors influence High Density design

(see whitepaper for more info)


HOW HIGH DENSITY DESIGN CAN AFFECT THE BOTTOM LINE

Lower Capex

Proven to meet BYOD demands of today and tomorrow

No need to purchase and deploy more APs as client population

increases

Lower Opex

Fewer system failures

Fewer client trouble calls

Fewer devices to manage

Higher utilization of network resources

Increased productivity of IT


QUESTIONS FOR YOUR WLAN VENDOR

Do you test WLAN at high densities with BYOD devices?

Can your system continue operation in the event of major

network failures?

If so, what is the recovery time?

Is performance for all clients on the system maintained as

density increases?


KEY TAKEAWAYS

BYOD is driving new levels of scale in all customer

networks of all sizes

Testing at this level is a requirement for the new network

Testing at full capacity proves system readiness to support

high performance for High Density networks

Resiliency at scale is critical for delivering High Density

WLAN networks

Customers should consider doing their own “taste tests”

like Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center

5

3

4

2

1


3

4

2

1

POLL QUESTION #3

My workforce is:

Highly mobile

Somewhat mobile

Mostly fixed

Not mobile/wireless


Date post:	29-Jun-2015
Category:	Technology
Upload:	haluk-ulubay
View:	224 times
Download:	0 times

Juniper wlan highdensity_webinar

Technology