non-broadcast ssid = no beaconing?

[Cooky]

We were told that even though Cisco AP's can support many different ssid's, it's a good idea to keep that number to minimal, due to the fact that each ssid is beaconed to the lowest data rate.

Does anyone know what the recommended max. number of SSID is?

Also if we simply make the SSID non-broadcast, does the AP cease sending beacon out for that non-broadcast ssid, and therefore make it somewhat better?

What i'm trying to ask is if having multiple SSID's would have a negative impact on performance, and if making them non-broadcast makes it any better?

 

[theevilsharpie]

What i'm trying to ask is if having multiple SSID's would have a negative impact on performance, and if making them non-broadcast makes it any better?

Beacons take up such a small amount of bandwidth that I doubt performance would be impacted in any significant way even if you are advertising several SSIDs. I could see it being an issue if you had an application with very strict bandwidth and latency requirements that required you to account for any protocol overhead when engineering the link, but Cisco's APs wouldn't be appropriate for that workload.