I understand the question and the environment you're alluding to re RF noise and AP distance from clients, etc. in a warehouse environment.
By default clients will always try to connect at the highest wifi standard and link rate, regardless of that connection type's qos level.
I've not seen an AP setup where the wifi standard (a, b, g, N, 5, 7, ...), channel size (20 vs 40mhz), channel, and in some cases speed stepping, couldn't be forced at the AP.
If you force the APs to only broadcast G, each on a specific channel, (literally just an example for discussion) the clients will connect that way if the device radio supports it,while re-using existing auth credentials. No client-side changes are necessary here and thus easy to test. I've encountered device radios that are only 5GHz, but that'd be clear in your testing. Forced AP settings do wonders for wireless networks.
Regarding user's opinions, they may claim to need the latest and greatest but in real life if their network use only needs megabits and the connection type satisfies that, they don't notice. And you don't tell them. :-)
I have already limited the "warehouse" SSID to 2.4GHz, 20MHz channel size and made an optimized channel plan that keeps the neighboring APs on channels manually chosen for minimum overlap. Anything else?
Speed stepping? Reducing the wifi standard looses features like roaming hints and stuff like that, no?
By default clients will always try to connect at the highest wifi standard and link rate, regardless of that connection type's qos level.
I've not seen an AP setup where the wifi standard (a, b, g, N, 5, 7, ...), channel size (20 vs 40mhz), channel, and in some cases speed stepping, couldn't be forced at the AP.
If you force the APs to only broadcast G, each on a specific channel, (literally just an example for discussion) the clients will connect that way if the device radio supports it,while re-using existing auth credentials. No client-side changes are necessary here and thus easy to test. I've encountered device radios that are only 5GHz, but that'd be clear in your testing. Forced AP settings do wonders for wireless networks.
Regarding user's opinions, they may claim to need the latest and greatest but in real life if their network use only needs megabits and the connection type satisfies that, they don't notice. And you don't tell them. :-)