This is an original planning guide. It is not a vendor manual, an official standard, or legal advice. Example addresses use documentation ranges. Review every command before you paste it.
What this hour is for
An AP count starts with the area, the number of people, and what they do. The calculators draft a count from numbers you type. Walls and channel reuse will change it. A draft is not an order.
More APs are not always better. They contend. The channel page is the constraint. Write both numbers: the count you would buy, and the channel plan you still owe.
A guest network and a voice network change the count. Say whether they exist. Do not survey a building you do not administer.
One floor is enough for this hour.
The change you can finish
Apply nothing during the writing of the note. When the lab window opens, it is one change on the device named in the ticket. Read the draft, then the device, then decide.
Rollback is the file or the revision you saved first. You do not invent a rollback after the only copy is gone.
- Write the floor and the headcount.
- Draft a count.
- Write the assumption that would make it wrong.
- Note that channels are still open.
- Do not order from the draft alone.
- Stop at one floor.
Mistakes that outlive the command
How Many Access Points Do I Need? goes wrong in a small set of ways. The list is here so the ticket can forbid them before the window.
- A count with no headcount.
- APs added until the map looks full.
- A survey of a site you do not run.
- Channels ignored.
- Voice and data treated as the same if they are not.
Decisions to write down
One decision for How Many Access Points Do I Need?: Headcount and area are written. The draft count is labeled a draft. Channel planning is still open. One floor only. And no foreign site was surveyed.
Checks before you call it done
Confirm this before you call the change done: The numbers are in the ticket. The assumption is a sentence. Nothing was ordered. The channel page is the next dependency. And a second person can see the headcount. If one of those fails, stop.
One floor. A draft count.
Do not order from the calculator alone.Before you leave the device
How Many Access Points Do I Need? ends when the hostname on the device matches the hostname in the ticket. If it does not, you are on the wrong box. Stop. A command that succeeded on the wrong box is not progress.
The draft stays a draft until a person has read the names in it. A generator does not log into the device and does not know which interface is the uplink. You delete a line that names a device, a zone, or a prefix you did not write down.
0.0.0.0/0 is not kept because a sample included it. A source you can say is the source you keep. 192.0.2.0/24, 198.51.100.0/24, 203.0.113.0/24, and 2001:db8::/32 are documentation. They belong in the note. They are not prefixes you type onto a production device because they appeared in a draft.
prompt-for-this is a reminder that a secret is missing. It is not a password, a key, a community string, or a pre-shared key you save in the ticket or in git. The real secret stays in the store.
One change is the window. A VLAN and a routing protocol and a VPN do not share it. If two things move and the result is wrong, you will not know which one did it. The next feature waits for its own page.
If the same step fails twice, stop for the day. The failure is the result. Adding a forum command beside a half-applied config produces a device nobody can rebuild. Restore the copy you took first.
A second person reads the device name and the change aloud. If they cannot find them in the ticket, the note is not done. Silence is not agreement. Then leave the device alone.
This page is a planning guide. It is not a vendor manual, not an official standard, and not a permission to touch a network you do not administer. The pillar guide owns the wider design. This page owns one lab proof.
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