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Data Rates

Disabling clients with lower data rates can improve WLAN performance in three ways:

  • Increase throughput by ensuring clients are transmitting data only at higher rates.

  • Encourage clients to roam, reducing the effects of a sticky client.

  • Reduce management frame overhead by increasing the MBR.

You can also lower the AP transmit power for cell sizing purposes and to limit co-channel inference. In some cases, you might want to configure static channel and power settings instead of dynamic RF.

Rather than limiting data rates, a better option may be to use WiFi 6E, which disallows older generation Wi-Fi devices (slower, thus extensive airtime consumption) in the 6 GHz band. You can also enable dual band to automatically eliminate unnecessary 2.4 GHz radios.

Figure 1: Data Rates for Custom Data Rates for Custom

For high-capacity WLANs, we recommend that you use 802.11n or 802.11ac frequency bands and select a high minimum data rate, such as 18 Mbps (disable legacy 802.11a/b/g APs). That said, it is worth bearing in mind that although all modern 5-GHz client will accept any data rate the AP is announcing, it is possible that some legacy clients will only accept 6, 12, or 24M (i.e., not 18 Mbps).