AP Overloaded

WiFi Manager raises this alarm when it sees an Access point rejecting the request to associate by a new wireless client because of overloaded condition.

When does this overloaded condition arise ?

Access points maintains an Association table which has the state information of all the associated mobile clients. When this table reaches the permitted level, the Access point will start rejecting requests for new associations.

What are the possible reasons for such overloaded condition and what can the WLAN Administrators do about it ?

• Really heavy load from legitimate clients: Access Points in densely populated WiFi user areas face such overloading. This is normal, having additional Access points in those areas can solve this problem. Sometimes this can also be because of the Access point only allowed to accept certain number of associations, in such cases changing their configuration suitable will help.



• Denial of service attack using fake associations: If the AP is not really overloaded but has been made to reject clients, then it can be because of denial of service attack. Attackers using a WiFi laptop and opensource tools can cause such problems. Look for other DoS alarms such as deauthentication flood, authentication flood, association flood etc., for the overloaded AP. If there are more DoS alarms raised for the same AP, locate and fix the attackers to make the AP normal.