At a sold-out civic concert, APs show high channel utilization with relatively little user data. Traces reveal storms of probe requests from hundreds of phones. What performance issue dominates?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Hundreds of phones shouting “anyone there?” can fill the air before a single song lyric downloads. Probe and management overhead is a classic ultra-dense tax. Design for that control-plane noise, not just user data rates.
Full Explanation
In ultra-dense venues, probe requests, probe responses, and other management frames can dominate airtime even when application traffic is modest. Mitigation includes optimized probe response behavior, careful SSID count, minimum rates, and adequate AP density/channel plan. DHCP/DNS suffix issues, WPA3-192-bit mode, or a stage-switch STP loop would show different signatures and are not the primary story described.