Channel - Auto: Methodology?

Access Points
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Hi Alta team! I am curious about AP channel selection. With channels set to Auto, how often do the APs select their channels? Is it only on boot, or is there an RRM type process running that dynamically changes channels throughout the day?

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@rutman286 Currently it bases its selection on channel utilization, strongest interferer, and number of interferers, and occurs only once at boot time. We do plan on improving that soon to adjust channels at night based on whether the channel utilization was too high during the day.

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Sounds great. I really appreciate how willing you are to clearly and transparently answer our questions. It makes me feel very comfortable working with Alta! I am back from vacation and will write up a review of my APs over the weekend. I have NOTHING negative to say.

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@Alta-Jeff Any updates for dynamic channel assignment (RRM)? This is the one thing holding me back from purchasing. These would be used in a dense area like an apartment building with >20 different wireless networks.

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@ccaltalabs How many APs on site are we talking about here? Typically manual channel planning, using our full wireless scan, isn’t cumbersome until you get to 20+ APs.

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This would be for home use. Maybe 3 or 4. However, there are well over 20 neighboring networks.

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@ccaltalabs Even in a congested environment, with 3 or 4 APs, you can just open up all APs in separate cards, run Full Scan on all of them simultaneously, and choose one non-DFS channel for one AP (the channel with the lowest metrics from the scan) and three DFS channels for the others (once again, those channels with the lowest metrics), and generally not have to worry about channels. DFS channels are relatively quiet in most environments, so changing channels multiple times a day is more likely to introduce more problems than less.

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@Alta-Jeff Thanks for the suggestions and information. Just would like to see dynamic channel assignment (RMM) as an option for users. It’s something that most other vendor WAP’s have and RMM is what I’m using now.