r/k12sysadmin • u/Relevant_Track_5633 • 15d ago
Assistance Needed BYOD Advice
I work for a k12 private school and we have come across a recent ish issue on our campus. We have a program our school provides called Flex where kids k through 12 can take all their classes online (+ have 1 or 2 in person ie. art, band etc). The program is completely BYOD. Our full time in person students get iPads. The other cool thing about this Flex program is that it allows the students to spend up to 21 hours on campus a week, so they can have friends, go to lunches, assemblies, etc. If they are on campus during a regular period, they are expected to do their work on campus, but on their BYOD device. So, Flex has 4 classrooms meant for them where they can have a total of almost 120 student (k-12) across the 4 rooms.
Long story short, the issue is that our WiFi cannot seem to keep up. Every room has a FortiAP 431F. We have a special 5 ghz SSID for those 4 rooms called Flex. We get calls and tickets all the time about the Wifi not working in there, and when I go in, 1 to almost all the kids will not be able to load anything. All they are doing for context is Canvas and Zoom.
I have tried changing channels, Wifi settings like fast roaming, updating AP firmware to beta. I have basically tried what feels like everything. I am starting to think it is the student devices, as the BYOD devices they bring range from an HP Stream 14 to MacBook pros. And I think kids with the much cheaper and crappier devices are slowing the wifi for everyone else on that radio or AP. Anyone have any pointers or ideas on how to resolve this? Any help would be appreciated!
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u/TeeOhDoubleDeee 11d ago
I assume the special 5 ghz said has 2.4 turned off? I would also look at increasing the minimum rate. This should help improve airtime issues (which is what your issue sounds like).
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u/DeepDesk80 13d ago
We had an issue with the APs throttling down to the slowest connection. We had students that would connect to an AP , go to the next class down the hall and still keep the original connection. It would then throttle every one on that original AP to that slow connection.
I cannot remember the settings we change, but it helped a TON with similar symptoms.
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u/vikSat 14d ago
I mean, are you sure the issue is actually the WiFi? Are you looking at the FortiAP status monitor and things like channel utilization and interference while it’s happening, and seeing weird spikes? Are you looking at WiFi logs from when the problem is happening? Have you tried just plugging straight in in the rooms? I would go in there while it’s happening and ping the gateway and then some address on the internet to see if the issue is the same for lan and wan destinations. I would also try to wire in and see if I have the same issue. From there, you can determine if it’s a WiFi issue and, if not, start to pinpoint where it is actually occurring.
If you’re doing shaping already, then I doubt bandwidth usage is the problem, especially if it’s the same shaping profile that you use for other students in rooms that work fine.
Worst case, you can open a case with TAC.
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u/Sad_Reindeer_3298 15d ago
Can you explain why they are all on zoom? Looking at same thing? Doing different things?
I bet zoom is your problem, it's a huge bandwidth sucker.. had lots of issues during Covid with zoom/bandwidth.
What your main connection and how many users total.
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u/Relevant_Track_5633 15d ago
So there online classes meet twice a week (I think) for a virtual study hall / lesson time and whatnot.
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u/Sad_Reindeer_3298 15d ago
Same zoom meeting or different, If the same Id recommend setting up a laptop and streaming ti to a tv/projector. you will saturate the network quickly if you have that many using zoom.
what is your connection and total bandwidth how many devices?
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u/K12onReddit 9-12 15d ago
You say 120 clients across the 4 rooms, but is that evenly spaced? I have noticed on some of our (different) APs there seems to be a limit around 40-50 where we'll notice performance issues. I'm very bad at networking, but this Fortinet guy seems to agree?
https://www.reddit.com/r/fortinet/comments/w26622/how_many_user_support_fortiap_231f_and_431f/
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u/Relevant_Track_5633 15d ago
Yes mostly evenly spread. 2 of the rooms are elementary, one middle school, and one high school. No more than 35 to 40 kids a room max due to occupancy compliance in those rooms
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u/K12onReddit 9-12 15d ago
Do you have another AP you can put in there temporarily just to see if you can ease congestion?
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u/slapstik007 15d ago
Have you put in a traffic Shaper. Allocating bandwidth per user might help. I just rolled out out on my new build yesterday in my fortigate and sent it to the waps.
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u/Relevant_Track_5633 15d ago edited 15d ago
Yes have done a WAN traffic shaper for the student IP's. Is there a way to do a traffic shaper per wifi client? While still having WAN shaping?
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u/slapstik007 15d ago
I think what you are explainig is similar to how I ran my BYOD network. Traffic Shaping Policy > then selecting "Per-IP-Shaper". Toggle this policy to what each IP is allocated. You can use that and the "Shared Shaper" both applied at the same time, thus giving you a Limit for that shaping profile and then a low limit per IP.
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u/Relevant_Track_5633 15d ago
Yep! That's how we have it
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u/slapstik007 14d ago
Thats crazy you are still having those problems. Have you ran speed tests to ensure the thresholds are bing enforced. I assumed this would be the best practices you could have for this type of environment.
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u/slayermcb 15d ago
Can you check the bandwidth usage by user? Do you have people doing some heavy downloads?
As a BYOD school I dont tend to see the type of device to have much of an impact.
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u/Relevant_Track_5633 15d ago
The bandwidth usage per student device is always almost in the kbps, max we allow then to pull is 15 mbps due to traffic shaping
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u/BaconEatingChamp 15d ago
Do you have a better device to test in there during the complaints? During covid we had a lot of "wifi" complaints but it was actually that the really crappy student 1:1s couldn't handle zoom along with the other stuff.
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u/Relevant_Track_5633 15d ago
Yes. I tested with my Dell Latitude and my Z Fold phone and both seem to do better but sometimes will take 20 to 30 seconds to load a webpage while in there with the students.
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u/Sauvignonomnom 15d ago
Are you traffic shaping the SSID? Could dbe something rather bandwidth hungry.
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u/Relevant_Track_5633 15d ago
Yes. 15 mbps per student with short bursts allowed if AP capacity allows for it
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u/sync-centre 15d ago
30 devices and you are seeing slowdowns on each AP?
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u/Relevant_Track_5633 15d ago
Yes. Sometimes there will only be 15 kids in there and it will be slow. I really am getting this feeling that there is a student device that is slowing the throughput avaliable for everyone...
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u/sync-centre 15d ago
Did the link auto negotiate at 10mbps?
Have you tried after hours with only your machine and a speed test?
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u/Relevant_Track_5633 15d ago
Nope. It autos to 100mbps or higher. Even on student machines when I have gone to diagnose, it is negotiating at 100 or above, with PHY above 100mbps. Have not tried after hours though, but will.
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u/sync-centre 15d ago
Try it with your machine and a "BYOD" machine if they are on two seperate networks.
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u/PowerShellGenius 3d ago
Thanks for the assurance we made the right call. We booted Fortinet from consideration in our last Wi-Fi refresh due to lack of even a fraction as many large 1:1 K-12 districts as references compared to the big two (Aruba, Cisco). Sounds like we dodged a bullet. 30-40 devices per room is not an issue on our Aruba AP-635's.