Anyone try the AI WLAN Optimization?
Curious if anyone has been using "AI WLAN Optimization" and if so, how it worked out?
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I have set it for all my remote sites and it runs great so far... I set it to run at 3am every morning. So far so good.
No complaints.
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"AI" is a bit of an exaggeration, it simply scans for the lowest interference channels and creates a channel plan to minimize overlapping frequencies. It seems to work well though, it would be useful to do any time your radio environment changes.
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I also run it once a week at 3 am. And I have the same problem as @Shoresy that the power optimization doesn't work because one of the APs does not support it.
Today however I ran into a serious problem with AI Optimization: just after a optimization run at 3 this morning, one of my APs went into a provisioning loop. Connect ==> Provisioning ==> Disconnected. Every 5 minutes. I had to do a factory reset of the AP and re-adopt it to the Omada network to get things back to normal. So, it is not all plain sailing. I will look into it further and maybe start a ticket with TP-Link.
Edit:
I came across the following information:
To troubleshoot the TP-Link Omada provisioning loop after AI WLAN Optimization, confirm the signal strength and wireless coverage distance[1], then check if the AI Roaming feature is enabled[2]. If it is, disable it and force provision the router[3]. The Omada SDN Controller User Guide provides instructions on how to configure and provision network devices on the same site[4]. If this does not resolve the issue, try resetting all EAPs in the site to factory defaults[5].
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So, the AI Optimization does not appear to do a good job.
Using Ekahau with a sidekick (v1) - I am finding a lot of co-channel interference. When I activate AI Ootimization, it basically cranks all the power settings to max, or nearly so. THE ENTIRE POINT OF AI TUNING is to "detect" radio and co-channel interference and move to not only a more suitable chanel, but also a better power setting. Before AI tune, and in nearly every product on the market, is "auto channel". This will automatically choose the best channel by scanning both on and off channel to see if there is a better feasible successor.
The point of AI should then be to combine that feature with power adaptation Because it now has a central brain, the function should then be to COORDINATE BOTH AUTO CHANNEL (that already exists individually) AND POWER SINCE IT SEES ITS NEIGHBOR AP's (both on Omada and others often mislabeled rogues).
That is not happening.
Also, Ekahau's channel planner comes up with a very different channel plan, while AI WAN seems to pick similar channels TOO OFTEN, and I have to break them up manually (which by definition defeats the point AI).
What should happen is the Omada AP's send their data to the brain (Omada AI), then OAI says, AP1 thats a noisy channel, lets move you, oh, and you are yelling and causing cochannel interference because your power is to high, lets move you down a few power levels. Oh, wait, now there is a potential gap, lets increase your power in small steps to "tune" it.
This should mostly all be done via "off channel" scanning, with a small bit of on channel scaning. And guys using AI at 2 am? Consider this - unless you have a VERY WEIRD ENVIROMENT (like a dance club), your usage at 2 am will NOT BE a good marker for noisy neighbors A better scan would be during peak hours - I have not found it to be that disruptive, but maybe find a "secondary" peak where there is a large amount of congestion. On big systems like Aruba and Cisco, in places like hospitals or hotels, when you bring these systems up or make major changes, you run the RRM (radio resource manamement) every 10 minutes for 72 hours up to a week to let the channel churn happen. Then after that (once most of the channels have found their optimimn POWER AND CHANNEL, things will settle down and you can scan once every smaller set interval (12 - 24 hours or whatever your environment calls for).
While I do not expect the same level of feature sets from non enterprise systems (or free) as enterprise systems, the mechanism is there already it should be fairly simple to impliment properly.
For reference, I am running 1 EAP 690e HD, and 5 EAP 245v3 in a suburb type enviroment with very close neighbors, so lots of places to see noise, but not so much that don't have clean airspace. My APs are roughly 20' apart (so should NEVER BE AT POWER MAX LEVEL).
FYI - Microsoft has intentionally prevented Windows 10 from using 6GHz regardless of the hardware capability, this is to force adoption of the cra-a-ppy Windows 11. There is one "preview" test driver for an Intel 210 model card that supposedly works for Windows 10 but I have not gotten it to yet as my main machine was sent back for service and the replacement has a 211 model card. Even Windows 11 users are having trouble getting connect to 6GHz.
LASTLY: TP-LINK, PLEASE OPEN UP UNII-2 AND UNII-e channels (5GHz) on your US models (you already have the DFS channel back off for channels 52 - 64, so whats the hold up?) That is a lot of extra channels we could use that are just sitting there. So, there are only 2 channel blocks @ 80 Mhz (36 - 48, 149 -161) that do not colide under your present enviroment. So what do I do with my 3rd AP? Or 4th, etc.? If you want more revenue, stop restricting those channels for your "business class AP's" even just adding the DFS channels (52 - 64) would help.
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