MSM7xx Controllers Configuration Guide v6.4.0

9 Radio Resource Management
The radio resource management (RRM) feature provides effective auto-channel and auto-power
mechanisms that enable administrators to optimize their wireless RF environment.
RRM can create a system-wide channel/power plan that maximizes capacity, coverage, and usage
across all the AP radios in a network. Once this RF plan is in place, RRM can continuously monitor
the RF environment to detect issues that impact performance and automatically make adjustments
to mitigate any problems.
RRM requires a detailed system-wide understanding of the radio environment. To collect this
information, each AP scans its local radio environment and sends the data to the controller, which
then aggregates the information to provide a complete picture of the radio environment. The
information is gathered continuously as a background activity, so that the controller always has a
reasonably up-to-date view of the RF environment throughout the network.
Using this information, the controller can periodically (or manually under administrator control) run
an analysis to create a channel/power plan. The administrator can choose to have RRM
automatically apply the new channel/power plan, or review the proposed changes and then apply
them manually. The power/channel plan algorithm then transitions the network from the old plan
to the new plan with minimal disruption of service, coverage, and performance.
Monitoring active (in-use) channel(s) by an AP is straightforward. But, to support RRM, the AP must
also monitor the alternate channels. To accomplish this, APs devote a small percentage of time to
off-channel scanning (typically less than 1%). (Off-channel scanning for RRM purposes is integrated
with IDS scanning.)
The core functionality of RRM is system-wide control of auto-channel and auto-power settings for
all controlled APs. The algorithm runs centrally on the controller (or team manager) and collects
information from all controlled APs. This information includes the current radio operating
configuration (channel and power), a list of neighbor radios heard by each radio (SSID, BSSID,
average RSSI of beacons, etc.), and channel quality metrics for all potential channels of each
radio.
Supported products
RRM is supported on the following products:
• HP MSM720
• HP MSM760
• HP MSM765 zl
• HP MSM775 zl
• HP MSM410 (Severe interference detection/mitigation, including spectral analysis, is not
supported.)
• HP 425
• HP MSM430
• HP MSM460
• HP MSM466/466-R
• HP 517 (Severe interference detection/mitigation, including spectral analysis, is not supported.)
All RRM features will work on controller teams.
On older APs (MSM310, MSM32x, MSM33x, MSM317, and the MSM422), auto-channel and
auto-power are performed on the AP (in a non-system-wide fashion). The RRM system-wide
auto-channel/power algorithms treat these APs as external APs when calculating the channel/power
plan.
182 Radio Resource Management