topic Re: WLC pratical limits in Wireless

WLC pratical limits

janesh_abey — Sun, 04 Jul 2021 06:35:56 GMT

Hi all,

the data sheets provide the number of max supported APs on different controller platforms.

However in practise typically services can get affected before reaching this threshold.

for obvious reasons no vendor will come out and state the practical limit.

Is there a rule of thumb or a recommendation around this?

Thanks,

WLC partical limits

Leo Laohoo — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:48:07 GMT

I'd leave -10 per controller.

So if I have a WiSM-1, the max I'll have (per controller) is 140.

WLC pratical limits

Scott Fella — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 03:18:24 GMT

I really think they have enough fluff built into the max ap limit for that. It's more of the client connections and throughput that I would be worried about.

Thanks,

Scott

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Re: WLC pratical limits

janesh_abey — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 03:31:44 GMT

for argument sake, lets assume BW and the clinet number is not an issue.

for example lets take an enviornment with a 5760 consists of:

-a maximum of 8000 wlan devices - no drams with client number as the max is 12000

-utilsing all 6x 10G ports- no issues with bandwidth.

- 800 APs

how do you work out the upper limit for APs per controller in this scenario?

Re: WLC pratical limits

Leo Laohoo — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 03:58:43 GMT

What kind of APs? If you're not employing 802.11ac, then you should be fine. You can go up to the current maximum supported AP.

The support can even go up to 2500 APs. The main issue I'd be looking at is your backbone. Ok, true you have used 6 10 Gbps links to your core/distro switch. But what is your core/distro switches?

May I add this ...

The WiSM-2 can support two 10 Gbps distribution ports but only one is enabled all the time. The 5508 can support 500 APs with 8 Gbps (or less) of distrubution ports.

The main question is your core switches/network.

Re: WLC pratical limits

Scott Fella — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 04:03:18 GMT

I don't look at it like that. I see the limit as the max I can put on the WLC no matter what. I have customers that are at max or close to max of 5508's and might only have two or four gig ports connected with no issues.

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Re: WLC pratical limits

Scott Fella — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 04:06:53 GMT

Take a look at the 8500... That supports way more APs and only has two 10gig ports. Also look at the 2504 for example, they ended up increasing the limit, so you know that the WLC can handle the AP count.

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Re: WLC pratical limits

janesh_abey — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 05:19:27 GMT

Leo,

APs are 802.11n and collapsed core with 7Ks.

cheers,

Re: WLC pratical limits

janesh_abey — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 05:21:46 GMT

thanks for your inputs gentlemen.

I'm going to stick with the limit in the datasheet as max.

Re: WLC pratical limits

janesh_abey — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 05:28:39 GMT

Scott,

while we are on the subject of WLCs, with AP SSO for 5500 and 8500 - with the redundant port connectivity, does it need to be directly connected? or can it go through a switching infrastructure?

to me it does not make sense to run a copper cable between the boxes and directly connect it specially if u have 2 fibre connected DCs.

Thanks

Re: WLC pratical limits

Scott Fella — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 06:54:56 GMT

As for now, it needs to be directly connected. The reason being is that Cisco doesn't support it unless its directly connected. Until they do, then you can, but you need to read their fine print.

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Re: WLC pratical limits

janesh_abey — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:10:59 GMT

thanks Scott,

pardon me. but that is crap. who on earth would keep both boxes in the same location?

i'm looking at a soultion for two DCs which fibre connected and seems like 6500/wism2 with redundandat VLAN is the way forward until cisco come out of the cave.

Might have to look at other vendors!!

WLC pratical limits

Leo Laohoo — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:49:32 GMT

who on earth would keep both boxes in the same location?

I've got six 5508. Three each are in the same location. Each are connected back to a 6500 using copper.

I've got a pair of 6500 in another two locations on a VSS. Both chassis is filled to the brim with WiSM-1 and WiSM-2.

There's nothing wrong with a design like that.

Re: WLC pratical limits

Scott Fella — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:58:57 GMT

Same here... I have customers that keep redundant WLCs at each DC. Put it this way... Unless your vlans are extended to the other DC, the fact that is there was a failover and WLC 1 in DC 1 went down and you had WLC 2 in DC 2 as the backup, well of you didn't extend your vlans, your users who are centrally switched would have to re dhcp again. And not all devices can do this well and if you had static address on certain devices, you are screwed.

That's my opinion about having a primary in one DC and a backup in another DC.

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Re: WLC pratical limits

janesh_abey — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 20:50:49 GMT

i'm talking about 8500s here leo..read the post pls...

Re: WLC pratical limits

Leo Laohoo — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 21:01:18 GMT

It doesn't matter, Janesh, what model is your WLC. What is important is redundancy and putting WLC in each DC works fine and is considered safe and recommended practice.

I mean you can even stick a WLC solo on a site or have an added redundancy in a different location.

At the end if the day, it works and I get redundancy.

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Re: WLC pratical limits

janesh_abey — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 21:17:24 GMT

say u need to support 4000APs- instead of having multiple wism2s or 5760s for the matter.,you throw in 8500s.

now if the redundant port was SMOF , you can easily throw another box in the other DC and have a nice HA setup.

to extend vlans we use VPLS as the core is MPLS.this does not pose any challenges about dhcp.All devices are allocated IPs from DHCP.

In my opinion although 8500 is considered SP grade, it fails in this occasion.It got features for 3g/4g etc and that is fine but in this particular instance it cannot be utilised in an efficient manner

with 7.4 code you can create a lag so the capacity on the uplinks can be 20G but it is unfortunate that the the backplne of the box is 10G :-)box can only process 10G 🙂 .I also think 10G backplane is not enough in SP environment.

With designs, I ususally tend to avoid multiple controllers unless there is a compelling reason.

In my opinion there will be hidden costs associated with it such as multiple licenses/support contracts for multiple chassis /supervisors/power/realestate the lot.

Re: WLC pratical limits

Leo Laohoo — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 22:52:23 GMT

In my opinion  there will be hidden costs associated with it such as multiple licenses

Ummmmm ... I think this has changed with 7.4.100.0 firmware. You get two hardwares, enable HA and the license can be "shared" in event of a failover.

But then, you need to have a second unit.

Re: WLC pratical limits

Scott Fella — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 22:56:45 GMT

You have to wait until Cisco support HA without being directly connected. They will eventually come out with that, but you will also have to wait on what's the requirement for that. I don't thing the hardware is going to change in which it supports what SFP modules.

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WLC pratical limits

janesh_abey — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 23:07:38 GMT

thanks to both of you for the contributions 🙂