DTIM and Beacon Interval with iPhones

[tcviper]

Hello all,

So i have been experimenting a lot with getting wireless (Cisco WAP371) as stable as possible, especially with iPhones and iPads. They do seem to connect but sometimes the SSID does not show up or it drops connection when in sleep mode.

What I have seen so far is that the combination of setting a static channel (1,6,11) on 2.4ghz with bandwidth of 20mhz (instead of 20/40) and disabling frameburst seems to help a lot. Specially since our house is pretty big and wifi strenght can sometimes drop to pretty low levels.

Now Ive also read a lot of articles about DTIM and Beacon interval settings, by default this was DTIM: 2 and Beacon Interval: 100 on this Cisco Access point. Does any of you have a good optimized setting that will work better with especially iPhones? I read a lot about DTIM of 1 and Beacon to 50 or 75.

So far DTIM: 2 and Beacon to 75 seems to work better then 100.

Any thoughts?

Reach is more important then speed in this case, since we use 5Ghz radio for AC speeds for laptops.

 

[azazel1024]

I guess just play with it. I've left the beacon at 100 on all of my routers/access points and they all work fine, even with my iDevices.

DTIM is going to change how frequently the wifi chipset wakes up to listen for a beacon/request for data.

The lower the number, the more frequent the wake ups. I'd move the beacon back to 100 and play with DTIM to try 1 and try something much higher like 5 and see what happens.

 

[tcviper]

DTIM I set to 1 now and Beacon to 100 as it seems apple also uses 100 on their airport devices.

 

[RogerSC]

I've got a couple of iPhones and an iPad here, and the router default beacon interval has always worked well. Just looked at dd-wrt, and the beacon interval is set to 100ms. here as well.

Sounds like you're on the right track *smile*.

 

[stevech]

rarely do I see the 802.11 beacon interval at other than 100 milliseconds (10/second)

 

[CaptainSTX]

My router and APs are all set at default settings. Beacon interval is 100 on all APS and 1 AP uses a DTIM of 1 and the other two are set at 3. I have never had any issues with Iphone modes 3, 3G, 4 and currently a 5C nor with an Ipad. Phones and Ipad connect equally well to all radios.

All my APs are on fixed channels for both bands and 20 Mhz bandwidth on the 2.4 Ghz radios.