WLC 7.5.102.0 Client Load Balancing

Hi,
Regarding 'Client Load Balancing' feature in WLC code 7.5.102.0, which one will take precedence:
- Load Balancing enabled in RF Profile and applied in an AP Group.
- Load Balancing enabled in WLAN
Also, is there any way to determine the statistics of the Load Balancing in RF Profile? (similar to the Statistics for Client Load Balancing enabled per WLAN in Wireless> Advanced > Load Balancing > Load Balancing Statistics)
Thanks in advance!
- edison

RF Profiles overrides any global settings, just like AP Groups can override the vlan or interface mappings.
say for example, I want to leverage the RF Profile for highly dense deploytment (like Town Hall or influx of users) and as result i want to deploy more temp APs that will coexist my existing APs. I just want to modify the High Density parameter - limiting the max clients only. but the RF Profile comes with the Load Balancing too and i don't think it cannot be disabled separately.
> Load balacing is enabled on the WLAN and isn't in the RF Profile. High Desnity, you create a RF Profile to disable the lower data rates, maybe 54 and 36 as mandatory and 24 and or 48 supported... depends on how much you want to shrink your cells. Also setting the max and min TX power.... no need for load balancing if you shrink the cells down.
so when i apply the RF Profile to the AP Group, the profile's Load Balancing settings will also be applied together with my preferred High Density settings - while my WLAN settting is not enabled with Load Balancing.
> No.... you either enable load balancing on the WLAN or not. The screen shot I showed you is a threshold configuration if its enabled.
Thanks,
Scott
*****Help out other by using the rating system and marking answered questions as "Answered"*****

Similar Messages

H-REAP and Client Load-Balancing

I'm told by Cisco that H-REAP does not support client load-balancing.
We have a situation where we want to deploy LWAPPs using H-REAP into a conference room where training would take place.
Any suggestions on how to overcome the inevitable slowness these people are going to experience from being unevenly associated with the APs?
We can't re-write the application so we are looking for a wireless solution.
Anyone hear about how other organizations have dealt with this type of situation?
I'll be glad to supply more details if I am not being clear in my description of the problem.
Thanks in advance. All responses will be rated.
Paul

This is the functionality which is missing in H-REAP: Client and Network Load Balancing
"Radio Resource Management (RRM) load-balances new clients across grouped lightweight access points reporting to each controller. This function is particularly important when many clients converge in one spot (such as a conference room or auditorium) because RRM can automatically force some subscribers to associate with nearby access points, allowing higher throughput for all clients. The controller provides a centralized view of client loads on all access points. This information can be used to influence where new clients attach to the network or to direct existing clients to new access points to improve wireless LAN performance. The result is an even distribution of capacity across an entire wireless network.
Note: Client load balancing works only for a single controller. It is not operate in a multi-controller environment."
I suppose if we limit the number of users that can associate with a particular AP then we will achieve some client load-balancing. Though a hard limit on the number of end-users will also lead to situations where some end users will not be allowed any access.

Extend TCP Proxy vs. Client load balancing

I am unclear how proxy and client load balancing interact with respect to custom address providers. If I define my own address provider, and I do NOT set the load-balancer parameter to client in the client configuration, will the proxy still do load balancing of connections as described in http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24290_01/coh.371/e22839/gs_configextend.htm#BEBCICDA ?
Edited by: user5179040 on Mar 23, 2012 9:43 AM

Hi,
The <load-balancer> element is only configured in the <proxy-scheme> and not at the client side. This parameter "proxy" dictates the proxy to use the specified strategy for load balancing client connections across proxies. The parameter "client" offloads the responsibility of load balancing to client across proxies or randomly select proxies.
I am unclear how proxy and client load balancing interact with respect to custom address providers. If I define my own address provider, and I do NOT set the load-balancer parameter to client in the client configuration, will the proxy still do load balancing of connections as described in http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24290_01/coh.371/e22839/gs_configextend.htm#BEBCICDA ?
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
NJ

[svn:bz-trunk] 13477: Bug: BLZ-455 - Document client-load-balancing property in the sample config

Revision: 13477
Revision: 13477
Author:   [email protected]
Date:     2010-01-13 05:17:10 -0800 (Wed, 13 Jan 2010)
Log Message:
Bug: BLZ-455 - Document client-load-balancing property in the sample config
QA: No
Doc: No
Ticket Links:
    http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/BLZ-455
Modified Paths:
    blazeds/trunk/resources/config/services-config.xml

Client Load balancing in AS with RAC

Friends,
1. Is an application servers cluster supports client load balancing.
If not....
2. if RAC is configured with appplication servers:
client -> appl sever -> rac_node -> shared database
is there a possibility to configure CLIENT load balancing with the aid of any of the above
components (or smth else that i missed) i.e. avoid using hardware client load balancing
or third party software client load balancing???
Thanks much for help.

Hi, I have the same question.
I am using RAC (11.1.0.7) and would like to load balance two application servers in the same way, for apache, forms and reports using 10.2.0.4 iAS FAR.
If I could load balance the apache connection, I'm sure it would be simple from there, again, I only have software load balancing available.
Could you point me to a doco?
Thank you very much.

Wireless clients load balancing on the APs on WLC 4404

Hi Experts,
I'm just wondering if the WLC 4404 with firmware 4.2.207.0 can load balance the wireless clients on different WAPs. Let's say that an AP is already handling 15 Wireless devices. When the 16th is trying to join, the controller somehow puts it on another nearby AP, even the signal from this AP is weaker. I heard the similar feature on other Wireless solution vendors. I'm just wondering if Cisco has the similar feature or not.
Thanks!

Yes it is known as aggressive load balancing sending a code 17 making the wireless client to loook at another nearby AP.
here it is the documentation:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6366/products_tech_note09186a00809c2fc3.shtml

Client load-balancing

Hi all,
a short question.
Is there a feature in Cisco WLC like load-balancing based on bandwidth utilization?
What I mean is, one AP (channel6) has a channel utilization of 40%, the neighbor AP (channel 11) has a channel utilization of 10%.
So I would like push new clients automatically to the AP in channel 11.
many thanks
Martin

It doesnt work worth a crap anyway ... Most clients don't adhere to code 17 so what's the point ...
Aggressive load-balancing works at the association phase. If enabled and the conditions to load-balance are met, when a wireless client attempts to associate to a LAP, association response frames are sent to the client with an 802.11 response packet that includes status code 17. This code indicates that the AP is too busy to accept any more associations.
It is the responsibility of the client to honor, process or discard that association response frame with reason code 17. Some clients ignore it, even though it is part of the 802.11 specification. The standard dictates that the client driver must look for another AP to connect to since it receives a "busy" message from the first AP it tries. Many clients do not do this and send the association request again. The client in question is allowed on to the wireless network upon subsequent attempts to associate.

How can I debug Aggressive Load Balancing on the WLC ?

Hello Cisco-Experts,
I'm looking for the command on the Cisco WLC to debug Aggressive Load-Balancing.
There is a nice document, ID 107457 describing this feature, but it lacks the command.
Please investigate and help me and maybe improve YOur documentations.
Thanks in advance
Winfried

Hello NetPros,
I have disabled now "Agressive Load Balancing" now on the WLC. To my surprise, still Load-balancing packets are received from our HREAP-APs via a WAN-Link on the central WLC.
Here is an example:
Tue Jan 13 15:35:59 2009: 00:1c:bf:4a:3f:2e LBS data stored for Mobile 00:1c:bf:4a:3f:2e from AP 00:23:5d:0e:e9:e0(0) new saved RS
SI (A -128, B -53), SNR 41, inUse 1, [rcvd RSSI (A -128, B -54), SNR 40]
Tue Jan 13 15:35:59 2009: 00:1c:bf:4a:3f:2e LBS data rcvd for Mobile 00:1c:bf:4a:3f:2e from AP 00:23:5d:0e:e9:e0(0) with RSSI (A -
128, B -55), SNR 42
Tue Jan 13 15:35:59 2009: 00:1c:bf:4a:3f:2e LBS data stored for Mobile 00:1c:bf:4a:3f:2e from AP 00:23:5d:0e:e9:e0(0) new saved RS
SI (A -128, B -54), SNR 41, inUse 1, [rcvd RSSI (A -128, B -55), SNR 42]
It is remarkable that the MAC-addresses of many of the WLAN-clients do not belong to our company and packets are send via a WAN-link.
Why do I see these packets while load-balancing is disabled ?
How is this working ?
Thank You for any explanation.
Winfried

AP load balancing question

Hi there, is it possible to enable load balancing for a particular group of APs and disabled for the rest. Perhaps AP groups. Running 8500 WLC with 3600 series APs. It will enhance the service concurrent user capacities for areas with a high device count.
Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPhone App

Nope and I wouldn't recommend that feature. It cause soooooo many client issues when you around 12 clients associating to a given AP. If you have high density then as long as you are running v7.2, you have RF Profiles. These profiles are defined per AP Group if you want. On the RF Policies I would tweak the data rates depending on how the coverage is when looking at a post site survey. Knowing the power and the coverage pattern allows one to disable rates, set various rates as support and or mandatory. This is how you can reduce the cell size and have better client balancing that to enable client load balancing. Also tweaking the RRM is required too.
Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPhone App

Reg Load Balancing

Hi,
How to configure server side load balancing.
I saw two types Load based and Session based.
How to specify the options for the both
I know by setting parameter load_balance=on will enable in tnsnames.ora file.
whether above parameter enable client side load balancing or server side load balancing
Suggest me any document which explains both with example.
Thanks
Krishna

Hi Aman,
Your thoughts on the below Statements.
Setting the REMOTE_LISTENER parameter has the following effect -
The PMON process on that node will register with the remote listeners specified in the REMOTE_LISTENER value.
This means PMON process will update the remote listeners about the work load status on the local node.
When REMOTE_LISTENERS are set on all nodes, all PMON processes register with all other listeners.
When the client makes a connection and the connection goes to a specific listener (either using load_balance on or off),the listener that accepts the connection will check the load on all nodes to see which is the least loaded.
The listener is able to do this since PMON processes from all nodes have updated the listener about the statuses.and that listener will redirect the connection to the node with the least load and start a dedicated process on that node .
Now how does the PMON know which is the least loaded machine.
It gets the information from the FAN framework and load balance advisory.
FAN framework consists the following processes
MMON,PMON,ONS and AQ. (ONS is specific to Java clients and AQ is specific to ODI.Net clients)
Load Balancing advisory calculates the goodness of a node and forwards to MMON.
MMON builds the advisory and forwards it to PMON. And thus PMON is able to update all the listeners.
Setting the REMOTE_LISTENER parameter has the following effect -
The PMON process on that node will register with the remote listeners specified in the REMOTE_LISTENER value.
This means PMON process will update the remote listeners about the work load status on the local node.
When REMOTE_LISTENERS are set on all nodes, all PMON processes register with all other listeners.
When the client makes a connection and the connection goes to a specific listener (either using load_balance on or off),the listener that accepts the connection will check the load on all nodes to see which is the least loaded.
The listener is able to do this since PMON processes from all nodes have updated the listener about the statuses.and that listener will redirect the connection to the node with the least load and start a dedicated process on that node .
Now how does the PMON know which is the least loaded machine.
It gets the information from the FAN framework and load balance advisory.
FAN framework consists the following processes
MMON,PMON,ONS and AQ. (ONS is specific to Java clients and AQ is specific to ODI.Net clients)
Load Balancing advisory calculates the goodness of a node and forwards to MMON.
MMON builds the advisory and forwards it to PMON. And thus PMON is able to update all the listeners.
Regards
Krishna

Re : Help!! Load Balancing feature of Net8

Hi,
Not too sure if this is the right place to ask this question. Please kindly bear with me if its not.
The Net8 documentation stated that its client load balancing uses a random algorithm. Does anybody have info on the randomness and performance of this algo? What kinda of distribution does the random number generator follows and does it still performs well under extreme light/heavy load?
Any input or feedback from the experts there are greatly appreciated!
Thanks a miilion!
Sincerely,
WT

Hi Pradeep,
SAP Web Dispatcher uses the weighted round robin method for load distribution. This means that the request will automatically go to the instance that has the most free resources. So, if your app server 3 has the most free resources then the user requests will go to this app server. this is normally, the good way to go to avoid stress for a app server if resources are free on another instance in the cluster?
you can try the simple round robin method(as hinted by the below post) , but I am not sure, if this means it will be according to server nodes and how it will be based on CPU resources. One way you can do this is to add more server nodes in the higher capacity app server.
Take a look at SAP Help document site . Also, maybe you can think of a hardware load balancer, which can implement this feature.
cheers,
Shantanu

Load Balance 10.2.0.3

Hello,
We have a 2-node RAC and have configured client load balance. But when we looked at the 2 instance, the number of connection between the 2 servers are never equal. Instance one would show 500 users and instance two would show only 100 users. Why aren't the connection be some what equal, maybe 250 to 300? Is this the right way to test client load balance by looking at the connection from v$session? If the number of connections from v$session are not equal, does that mean client load balance is not working? Thank you.
RACDB=(DESCRIPTION =
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = node1-vip_host)(PORT = 1521))
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = node2-vip_host)(PORT = 1521))
(LOAD_BALANCE = yes)
(CONNECT_DATA =
(SERVER = DEDICATED)
(SERVICE_NAME = racdb)
(FAILOVER_MODE =
(TYPE = SELECT)
(METHOD = BASIC)
(RETRIES = 180)
(DELAY = 5)
)

First, as Dan mentioned, what's the actual load look like across the servers? Perhaps one node is much busier than the other?
Second, have you enabled server-side load balancing? Best practice is to enable both client-side and server-side load balancing.
Third, though it may not be coming into play in terms of the current question, are you aware you have an error in your connect string definition? Even though you've specified FAILOVER_MODE in the CONNECT_DATA, you neglected to enable failover, via a 'FAILOVER=ON' directive in the DESCRIPTION.
Try something like this for full load balancing and failover configuration:
RACDB=(DESCRIPTION =
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = node1-vip_host)(PORT = 1521))
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = node2-vip_host)(PORT = 1521))
(LOAD_BALANCE = yes)
(FAILOVER= yes)
(CONNECT_DATA =
(SERVER = DEDICATED)
(SERVICE_NAME = racdb)
(FAILOVER_MODE =
(TYPE = SELECT)
(METHOD = BASIC)
(RETRIES = 180)
(DELAY = 5)
Fourth, if you want load balancing to round robin, rather than based on server load, you can set 'prefer_least_loaded_node_<your_listener_name> = off' in your listener.ora on each node of your RAC cluster.
Finally, for a good discussion of connection management, load balancing, and failover, see James Morle's paper at: http://www.scaleabilities.co.uk.
Go to 'Whitepapers' and look for 'RAC connection management'. It's an excellent paper.
Hope that helps,
-Mark

Load balancing Client problem

Hi ,
This is my environment two 5508 in HA with release 7.4.121, ap 2600 and ap 3600, in flex-connect wan up local switching.
I put client windows size field to 1 and maximum denial count to 1. i connect many client and when i sniff autentication response on busy AP (ap with many client connected) i can't receive status code 17 from AP ? why ? how cani verify if i client don't honore status code 17 on association response ?
When i enable debug dot11 load-balancing enable i receive for example this log
*apfMsConnTask_4: Jun 23 16:48:12.798: 00:e3:b2:38:d1:52 Load Balancing mobile 00:e3:b2:38:d1:52 on AP c4:14:3c:ca:f4:a0(0) band 1 has 2 users - Good: rssi (antenna-A -73) (antenna-B -73), snr = 23
*apfMsConnTask_4: Jun 23 16:48:12.798: 00:e3:b2:38:d1:52 Load Balancing mobile 00:e3:b2:38:d1:52 on AP 28:34:a2:59:4b:00(0) band 1 has 1 users - Good: rssi (antenna-A -62) (antenna-B -60), snr = 30
*apfMsConnTask_4: Jun 23 16:48:12.798: 00:e3:b2:38:d1:52 Load Balancing mobile 00:e3:b2:38:d1:52 could not find acceptable 802.11a candidate -- defaulting all
*apfMsConnTask_4: Jun 23 16:48:12.798: 00:e3:b2:38:d1:52 Load Balancing mobile 00:e3:b2:38:d1:52 is permitted to associate with AP 28:34:a2:59:4b:00(0) (on Good count=0)
but in association response i receive every time status code 0 (success)
*apfMsConnTask_4: Jun 23 16:48:12.800: 00:e3:b2:38:d1:52 Sending Assoc Response to station on BSSID 28:34:a2:59:4b:05 (status 0) ApVapId 6 Slot 0
who can explain me this problem ? and how can i test this feature better ?

I will try to be clear, How can i verify if my client honore status code 17 on association response ? I try sniffing 802.11 packet but i can't see anything...status code is every time successfull.
My environment is with flexconnect wan up local switching, wlc 5508, ap 3600/2600/1600/1142.

WLC - Aggressive Load Balancing?

Hello,
The Wirless LAN Network bulit is as follows -
1. 1 x 4404 WLC
2. 40 x LWAPP 1131AG Access Points
3. Windows Clients used by the Laptop Clients.
4. Only one Wireless VLAN across the Capmus network - hence AP's, WLC & Clients are all in one VLAN / IP Subnet.
5. No Access Point Group is created.
6. Aggressive Load Balancing is enabled allowing 15 Clients as max connection per Access Point.
Problem facing -
1. Tried configuring the Aggressive Loadbalancing allowing only 2 x Clients per AP. But noticed that the 3rd Client connecting to the same AP as of the previous 2 Clients have connected. 3rd client is not associating to a different AP which is nearby.
Please can one help me, if i'm configuring & testing Aggressive Load Balancing in the right way!
Regards,
Keshava Raju

AMR is on target. In fact I just completed 20 hours worth of testing with variuos clients with ALB for a white paper I am doing. Code 17 isnt honored by most clients and is only sent 1 time from the AP. The clients will contiue to attempt to associate to the AP and the AP will allow them on.
Here is a peek of my white paper "still in draft"
WLC - Cisco WLC Aggressive Load Balancing; What is it and where did it go in 6.0!
I've spent the majority of my WLC experience at code level 4.2. Not by choice really, more
based on the fact that 4.2 is pretty darn stable and it is the only safe harbor to date for the Cisco WLC. Healthcare and Enterprise enviroments are typically slow to move on upgrades, especially when things are operating fine.
Since my latest project involves the deployment of hundreds of Cisco 1142s @ location grade, it required that I move to later code to support the 1142 access points. After much research, conversations with our
local Cisco Wireless SE, conversation with peers at other healthcare organizations, and direct contact with the aware team I had decided that 6.0.188.0 was a release that was of great interest.
As I start to get fimilar with the new code I am starting to see that things got moved around a little. One of the items is Aggressive Load Balancing. If you aren't fimilar with Aggressive Load Balancing (ALB) you definitly need to be and let me share why.
First lets look at what ALB is and how it works and then we will dive into the differences between the 4.2 code and the new options 6.0 gives us. ALB when enabled, allows the Cisco WLC to load balance wireless clients on access points that are joined to the same controller. “Key word here – same controller”. You can configure the load balancing window globally in the controller. What is the load balancing window you ask? Well is the maximum number of clients that should be allowed on the access point BEFORE it will start to load balance.
Lets assume for a moment you have an access point with 5 clients already attached. When client #6 sends association request to the access point the access point will kindly respond with an associaton response frame with the reason code of 17. The wireless client will see reason code 17 in the association response and will kindly find other access points to associate with. However, some devices will ignore this frame and yet still continue to try and associate to the access point. Note: The Cisco WLC will ONLY send 1 reassociation frame with a reason code of 17. It doesn’t flood the medium / client with multiple frames.
Its up to the client to honor this information and move on. But I can tell you from my experience and testing this isn’t always the case.
By default, 4.2 and 6.x both have a load balancing window of (5). Lets look at an example.
The window setting controls when aggressive load−balancing starts. With a window setting of five, for
example, all clients after the sixth client are load−balanced.
I know, what is the reason code talk, right. Lets cover this as well. If you dive into the 802.11 frames you will see “Reason Codes”. When a client sees the reason code of “17”, it indicates to the client that the access point is busy and the client should look else where.
yada yada yada
I will post the complete paper on my site: my80211.com in the next week or so ...

WLC Load Balancing Threshold

I am trying to understand how the load balancing threshold is calculated but I am finding conflicting information, even withing Cisco's own documentation. I would be grateful if anyone could help.
Cisco's latest Wireless LAN Controller Configuration Guide for software release 7.0.116.0 (April 2011) contains the following information for configuring Wireless > Advanced > Load Balancing Page (emphasis mine):
In the Client Window Size text box, enter a value between 1 and 20. The window size becomes part of the algorithm that determines whether an access point is too heavily loaded to accept more client associations:
load-balancing window + client associations on AP with highest load = load-balancing threshold
In the group of access points accessible to a client device, each access point has a different number of client associations. The access point with the lowest number of clients has the lightest load. The client window size plus the number of clients on the access point with the lightest load forms the threshold. Access points with more client associations than this threshold is considered busy, and clients can associate only to access points with client counts lower than the threshold.
Option 1
The formula shown is correct (load-balancing window + client associations on AP with highest load = load-balancing threshold). If so, this would mean that if you had a window size of 5 and the AP with the highest load at the time of calculation was 15, the threshold would be 18. However, as no APs have 18 associations then this threshold would never be reached. Even if an AP reach 18 associations, the next client trying to associate would trigger another calculation for the threshold which would be 21 (3 + 18) and so still, this threshold would never be hit.
Option 2
The description in the paragraph below is correct (The access point with the lowest number of clients has the lightest load. The client window size plus the number of clients on the access point with the lightest load forms the threshold). This sounds much more sensible to me. In this case, the window size was 3 and the AP with the lowest number of associations already had 7 clients associated, the load balancing threshold would be 10 i.e. no load balancing would occur until a client tried to associate with an AP which already had at least 10 clients associated.
Option 3
I have seen many descriptions on forums etc of the load balancing threshold being essentially the Client window size, i.e. if the client window size is 3 then load balancing will kick in when a client tries to associate to an AP with at least 3 clients already associated. This doesnt match the above documentation unless the AP with the least number of clients associated doesnt have any associated clients i.e. 0 clients.
Questions
I think Option 2 is the correct description of load balancing and the formula given stating use of the AP with the highest load is a typo (albeit still not corrected in the latest documentation). Am I correct?
The problem with using the option 2 method of calculating the load threshold is that you will be unnecessarily performing load balancing in an environment where some of your APs do actually have zero clients associated, unless you set the window size to somehing close to 10.
I read here http://www.perihel.at/wlan/wlan-wlc.html#aggressive-load-balancing that when calculating the load threshold, it only accounts for the 8 'best' APs for a given client. In other words, if you have 60 APs on your campus but only 20 are visible to the client, the controller will only perform its load threshold calculations bases on the 8 APs which have the best signal to the client. This would ,ake sense as there is no point setting a load threshold based on the lightest loaded AP which is not even within 'reach' of the client. Is this correct as I can not find any other documentation which supports this?
Thanks in advance for your help with this.

Interesting, the config guide contradicts itself in the same paragraph.....    I thought maybe we had two different documents with different explanations. I don't see any open documentation bugs asking to correct this, but I swear I've heard discussion on this in the past.......
First off: Option #3 was the "old way". I think it changed in 6.0.    If you had a threshold of 5, then as soon as you had 5 clients on an AP it would reject the association (3 times and then let them on the 4th attempt). Now its a sliding window/scale.
Option #1 I think is completely wrong. As you described, how in the world would you ever surpass the threshold if the highest AP + the window is what you have to beat to load-balance....?    RIght, that just doesn't make any sense to me.....
Option #2, the way you explain it is correct to my understanding...
Your question #3 is also correct (not sure if it is Top 8 or based on an RSSI threshold though.)
The idea is that you don't want some AP in a remote office with 0 clients being your starting point.   So I believe that it is based on the top X candidate for your client.    If your client has 4 viable candidates (lets just say -70 or better), and one of those APs has 5 clients and the rest have 15, I'd expect loadbalancing to try to get you to the 5 client AP if your window size was ~10...... something like that anyhow...

WLC 7.5.102.0 Client Load Balancing

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for