Chapter 21 Load Balancing
NWA-3160 Series User’s Guide
256
Imagine a coffee shop in a crowded business district that offers free wireless
connectivity to its customers. The coffee shop owner can’t possibly know how
many connections his NWA will have at any given moment. As such, he decides to
put a limit the bandwidth that is available to his customers but not on the actual
number of connections he allows. This means anyone can connect to his wireless
network as long as the NWA has the bandwidth to spare. If too many people
connect and the NWA hits its bandwidth cap then all new connections must
basically wait for their turn or get shunted to the nearest identical AP.
The following figure depicts an NWA with a hard bandwidth limit of 6 Megabits per
second (Mbps). Bandwidth up to 6 Mbps is considered “balanced”. More than that
and it becomes “overloaded”; the AP must then work harder to serve each client.
Figure 166
Load Balancing by Traffic Level Example
The yellow [
Y
], green [
G
] and blue [
B
] laptops are each using approximately 2
Mbps. Altogether, they consume the AP’s entire “balanced” bandwidth allotment.
When the red [
R
] laptop tries to make a connection, the AP (which does not want
to overload itself) denies it if an identical AP is in range that can take on the
burden of the new connection.
Note: If no other APs with matching settings are in range of the NWA, then it will still
accept the connection despite becoming overloaded.
Summary of Contents for 802.11a/g Wireless CardBus Card ZyXEL AG-120
Page 2: ......
Page 8: ...Safety Warnings NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 8...
Page 10: ...Contents Overview NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 10...
Page 20: ...Table of Contents NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 20...
Page 22: ...22...
Page 34: ...Chapter 1 Introducing the NWA NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 34...
Page 52: ...Chapter 4 Management Mode NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 52...
Page 108: ...108...
Page 146: ...Chapter 9 SSID Screen NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 146...
Page 160: ...Chapter 10 Wireless Security Screen NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 160...
Page 178: ...Chapter 14 IP Screen NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 178...
Page 186: ...Chapter 15 Rogue AP Detection NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 186...
Page 198: ...Chapter 16 Remote Management Screens NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 198...
Page 260: ...Chapter 21 Load Balancing NWA 3160 Series User s Guide 260...
Page 264: ...Chapter 22 Dynamic Channel Selection NWA 3160 Series User s Guide 264...
Page 276: ...Chapter 23 Maintenance NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 276...
Page 277: ...277 PART III Troubleshooting and Specifications Troubleshooting 279 Product Specifications 285...
Page 278: ...278...
Page 284: ...Chapter 24 Troubleshooting NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 284...
Page 292: ...292...
Page 368: ...Appendix D Importing Certificates NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 368...
Page 386: ...Appendix F Text File Based Auto Configuration NWA 3500 NWA 3550 User s Guide 386...