I’m sure this has been discussed before. Can someone explain how the various signal strengths of registered clients affect the overall performance of a Point-to-Multi-point link?
My understand is that 10 clients all registering -60dbm would have a better overall service than 1 of 10 having a signal strength -85db. For the reason I have drawn the conclusion that it might be best to group clients with similar signal strength readings to the same AP where possible. Does latency take the biggest hit?
Can someone help me understand the true effect here and possible an answer to why it has such effect?
Your observations are correct but it seems you have drawn the wrong conclusion.
You should absolutely refuse service to -85 customers. Actually, you should refuse service to even -75 customers where possible. With point to multipoint and TDMA you have shared air time, talking to bad connections (at poor modulations) KILLS the throughput of the entire access point.
Does it make sense then to adjust the CPE radios (via antenna gain or power) to get all of them as close as possible to the same signal strength?
For example, if the difference between my best and worst client on a 25 subscriber AP is… say 10dBm (i.e -65dbm and -55dBm) should I work on bringing all registered clients as close as possible to -65dBm?
I know “it is not a good practice to modify the power settings”, but I am just thinking about ways to further improve my network performance.
Just focus on not having crappy stations. Bad signal = lower modulations = lower rates = lower overall AP throughput. One bad CPE at basic rate 6mbit will cripple your entire setup. The goal here is not to have bad signals. Try not to have lower than -65dbm when possible.