Pinning and cascading avoidance in dynamic channel assignment for wireless lans

Abstract

Techniques are provided to determine channel assignments for wireless access point (AP) devices in a wireless local area network (WLAN). From each of a plurality of AP devices operating at least one of a plurality of channels in the WLAN, wireless activity data is received that represents activity in each channel associated with signals of devices operating in the WLAN and associated with signals and energy from devices that are not operating in the WLAN as detected by the AP devices by receiving radio frequency energy in each of the plurality of channels. During a channel plan evaluation session, the wireless activity data is evaluated for multiple ones of the plurality of access point devices to determine whether the channel on which an access point device operates should be changed such that a decision to change the channel for at least one access point is limited to a localized region of the wireless network and does not necessarily affect a channel change decision for access points outside of the localized region of the wireless network. The channel on which the at least one access point device operates is changed or assigned based on the evaluation. In one form, the wireless activity data is a single metric that is derived from multiple pieces of data, each representing a different component of wireless activity determined by an AP device to be occurring in a channel.