After APs on adjacent floors of a municipal office slowly crept up in transmit power, clients report sluggish browsing even though each floor heatmap still looks green. Captures show frequent deferrals to same-channel BSS energy. What performance limiter is most likely?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Green heatmaps can hide a noisy neighborhood. When upstairs and downstairs APs get louder on the same channel, they start talking over each other’s clients. That OBSS/co-channel fight steals airtime even when every RSSI patch looks pretty.
Full Explanation
Power creep expands cell footprints through floors and increases overlapping BSS (OBSS) energy on reused channels. Stations defer under CCA to foreign BSS traffic, raising latency and cutting capacity despite adequate coverage heatmaps. Remediation focuses on power/channel plans and vertical isolation—not DHCP pools, captive portals, or copper category, which would present different failure modes.