topic Re: Building a wireless bridge (9100 series APs and 9800 Controller) in Wireless

Building a wireless bridge (9100 series APs and 9800 Controller)

Stonent — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 18:05:27 GMT

I have a need to bridge across a 2 lane street from an office building to a parking lot to provide security gate control and possibly a video camera for security. The city would not allow us to run fiber under the street so we have to do a bridge.
I personally do not have any experience doing this and would like to get a list of hardware.

So I would need 2 external APs that could support being in a bridge, and I assume the "client" needs to be one with special firmware so it can connect to the other one as the bridge. I already have a 9800 WLC managing a mix of 1560 series, 9100 series, 3700, 3800 series APs.

I've looked for guides on this but everything seems to have old screenshots from 5500 series controllers or for older APs.

So I need to know what APs you think would be appropriate for this purpose. We don't have any intent of broadcasting any other SSIDs on this connection. (Will be using CDW for ordering)

Also wanted to know if I do this, can you trunk across the bridge, or can you only bring a single VLAN across? Because we have phones on a different VLAN from switch management and both are different from security. There will also be a gate control device in there that needs to be networked for RFID badge authentication

And finally, are there any guides on the cisco site for doing a bridge with a 9800 controller with like a set of 9120 APs?

Thanks!

Re: Building a wireless bridge (9100 series APs and 9800 Controller)

eglinsky2012 — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 17:27:54 GMT

The 9124 series AP is the current outdoor model. Since you'll be using it as a P2P bridge, I'd recommend the 9124D model (which has internal directional antennas).

See the following guide: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless/catalyst-9800-series-wireless-controllers/215100-join-mesh-aps-to-catalyst-9800-wireless.html

Re: Building a wireless bridge (9100 series APs and 9800 Controller)

JPavonM — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 06:04:03 GMT

Here are another official reference guides:
https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/17-1/deployment-guide/c9800-mesh-rel-17-1.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESNFzlGTueU

Re: Building a wireless bridge (9100 series APs and 9800 Controller)

Rich R — Sat, 05 Aug 2023 10:00:00 GMT

The functionality you're looking for is actually called Workgroup Bridge - check out these docs. The example uses 9105W but the principle is the same (you'd be using 9124 as mentioned above):
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/17-9/config-guide/b_wl_17_9_cg/m_ewlc_wgb.html
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless/catalyst-9105axw-access-point/218043-configure-access-point-9105axw-as-work-g.html