Sunday, May 16, 2010

Wi-Fi Tip: Multicast Reliability

Multicast data is sent at the highest enabled basic-rate (Mandatory
rate). This can cause issues for clients at the edge of the cell who
are connected at a lower enabled rate and cannot properly de-modulate
the frame. To improve reliability, set only the lowest enabled data
rate as basic/mandatory to ensure that clients at the cell edge can
receive multicast frames.

2 comments:

  1. Actually early wireless multicast deployments were tricky because a lot of folks didn't know how cisco worked multicast. When there was issues we would case our tail on the wired side. When in fact a capture showed the mutlti cast on the lowest man rate.

    A solid deisgn should allow for the lower data rates to be disabled.

    Good post

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  2. Yes, in conjunction with voice deployments either 11Mbps or 12Mbps is usually recommended as the lowest enabled data rate depending on whether 802.11b clients need to be supported.

    ReplyDelete