Administrator Guide

525 | Adaptive Radio Management Dell Networking W-Series ArubaOS 6.4.x| User Guide
3. Select an individual radio profile name to expand that profile.
4. Click Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) Profile, and then use the Adaptive Radio management
(ARM) Profile drop-down list in the right window pane to select a new ARM profile for that radio.
In the CLI
To assign an ARM profile to an AP group via the command-line interface, access the CLI in config mode and
issue the following commands where <ap_profile> is the name of the AP group, and <arm_profile> is the
name of the ARM profile you want to assign to that radio band.:
(host)(config) #rf dot11a-radio-profile <ap_profile> arm-profile <arm_profile>
(host)(config) #rf dot11g-radio-profile <ap_profile> arm-profile <arm_profile>
Using Multi-Band ARM for 802.11a/802.11g Traffic
It is recommended that you use the multi-band ARM assignment and Mode Aware ARM feature for single-
radio APs in networks with traffic in the 802.11a and 802.11g bands. This feature allows a single-radio AP to
dynamically change its radio bands based on current coverage on the configured band. This feature is enabled
via the AP's ARM profile.
When you first provision a single-radio AP, it initially operates in the radio band specified in its AP system
profile. If the AP finds adequate coverage on multiple channels in its current band of operation, the mode-
aware feature allows the AP to temporarily turn itself off and become an AP Air Monitor (APM). In AP Monitor
mode, the AP scans all channels across both bands to verify that each channel meets or exceeds its required
level of acceptable radio coverage (as defined by the in the ARM profile).
If the AP Monitor detects that a channel on the 802.11g band does not have adequate radio coverage, it will
convert back to an AP on that 802.11 channel. If the 802.11g band is adequately covered, the AP Monitor will
next check the 802.11a band. If a channel on the 802.11a band lacks coverage, the AP Monitor will convert
back to an AP on that 802.11a channel.
Band Steering
ARM’s band steering feature encourages dual-band capable clients to stay on the 5GHz band on dual-band APs,
freeing up resources on the 2.4GHz band for single-band clients like VoIP phones.Band steering reduces co-
channel interference and increases available bandwidth for dual-band clients, because there are more channels
on the 5GHz band than on the 2.4GHz band. Dual-band 802.11n-capable clients may see even greater
bandwidth improvements, because the band steering feature will automatically select between 40MHz or
20MHz channels in 802.11n networks. This feature is disabled by default, and must be enabled in a Virtual AP
profile.
The band steering feature considers several metrics before it determines if a client should be steered to the
5GHz band, including client RSSI. For example, this feature will only steer a client to the 5GHz band if that client
detects an acceptable RSSI value from an 5GHz AP radio, and the signal from the 5Ghz radio is not significantly
weaker than the RSSI from the 2.4GHz radio.
This feature also takes into account the current load on each radio of a dual-band AP. The band steering
feature will not steer more clients to 5G on that AP if there are many clients associated to the AP, and
significantly more 802.11a clients than 80211g clients.b
The band steering feature supports both campus APs and remote APs that have a virtual AP profile set to
tunnel, split-tunnel, or bridge forwarding mode. Note, however, that if a campus or remote AP has virtual AP
profiles configured in bridge or split-tunnel forwarding mode but no virtual AP in tunnel mode, those APs will
gather information about 5G-capable clients independently and will not exchange this information with other
APs that also have bridge or split-tunnel virtual APs only. The band steering feature will not proactively