I'm working with a couple Cisco WLCs and I know that they use information about client signal strength in determining device locations but I was reading up on "probe requests" and found that, by default, access points will forward probe requests they see only for SSIDs that they serve.
I found that I can disable the "filter" of probe requests so that APs will report all probe requests they see even if destined for unsupported SSIDs.
According to Cisco documentation they say that disabling "probe request filtering" will improve location accuracy but I can't tell if there are any caveats to doing so
Anyone have any experience with this?
The documentation I am going off of is here: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/wireless/controller/7.4/configuration/guides/consolidated/b_cg74_CONSOLIDATED_chapter_01111010.html
Best Answer
From my own experience, there are no caveats in disabling the filters.
To be honest, if there were an alarming amount of probe data coming from unknown/unassociated SSIDs, I'd be more concerned about the rogue SSIDs popping up in the vicinity of your WLAN, and the interference they would cause, as a posed to the increase in probe data.
It will definitely increase accuracy on location, but don't expect it to magically turn a low density location deployment into a <5 meter accurate one. (although, I don't know the physics behind this yet, or the actual gains from doing this) If you're particularly worried, just keep an eye on the bandwidth of the tunnels going back to the controller. (unless you have a 3850 already)