Compaq WL110, User Manual

Page: 104 / 144

8-4 Advanced Network Configurations
Note: The settings
Medium
or
Small
distance between Access Points require a
excellent quality of radio communications throughout the entire wireless
coverage area. In environments where the actual placement of Access
Points was designed to obtain maximum wireless coverage with a
minimum number of Access Points, changing the distance between
Access Points from
Large
to
Medium
or
Small
will not yield better results.
Adversely, doing so might seriously affect the roaming performance of
your wireless stations, risking network communication errors caused by
“out-of-range” situations.
If you consider using the option
Medium
or
Small
distance between Access Points
to create a high performance network, you are advised to read the section
“Frequency Channel Management” on page 6-13 as well.
For more information about Access Point density, please consult chapter
6 “Optimizing Performance”.
Multicast Rate
The Multicast Rate identifies the preferred transmission speed for your Access
Point broadcast traffic as forwarded by the Access Point. Where transmissions at
lower data rates are usually more reliable, you may prefer higher throughput
performance over greater coverage for your wireless radio signal.
For more information about multicast rate refer to the help-file of the
AP Manager program.
Bridge Parameters
One of the ways to optimize the performance of your wireless networks is to
prevent “redundant” traffic from being transmitted over the wireless network.
Redundant traffic may include:
■
Specific network protocols exchanged by networking devices such as
servers, that are not relevant to the wireless stations.
■
Broadcast and/or multicast messages exchanged by specific networking
devices such as servers that are not specifically addressed to the wireless
stations.
■
“Junk traffic” like for example error messages that are generated by
malfunctioning devices, or as the result of incorrect network configurations
that could have been avoided (for example closed network loops).
Filtering redundant traffic will save the bandwidth of the wireless medium for
the wireless stations, optimizing throughput efficiency for these stations.
Optimizing wireless performance via the
Bridge
tab can be achieved in the
following ways:
■
Protocol filtering to deny specific networking protocols from being bridged
to the wireless network interface (see “Protocol Filtering” on pag e8-5).
■
Filtering traffic exchanged between two specific stations that are identified
by their static MAC address (see “Static MAC Address Filter” on page 8-6).