topic Re: EWC vs Standalone AP in Wireless

EWC vs Standalone AP

MarB — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 08:07:59 GMT

Hello,

I have a quick question

does an AP with EWC funtion as a standalone AP? or they are different concepts?

if so, how does Cisco ensure standalone functionality ?

Re: EWC vs Standalone AP

Mark Elsen — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 09:09:35 GMT

- @MarB An EWC ap does also function as a standalone access point

Re: EWC vs Standalone AP

MarB — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 09:31:39 GMT

Thanks!

is there any link or documentation that can confirm? I've only found documentation explaining the deployment of EWC but no mention for the standalone feature support

Re: EWC vs Standalone AP

MarB — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 09:44:44 GMT

Also, is FlexConnect similar to standalone ap when supported?

Re: EWC vs Standalone AP

Mark Elsen — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 11:31:43 GMT

- @MarB I am the documentation (LOL) : an EWC based access point as 2 components : 1) an embedded
9800 controller 2) It remains available as an access point too.

Flexconnect is a different and unrelated topic : it refers to AP switching traffic locally instead of to the central
controller which is useful for remote deployments.

However the EWC solution is EOL : https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/wireless/embedded-wireless-controller-catalyst-access-points/wireless-ewc-access-point-eol.html
You should no longer consider deploying it. Instead go for the virtual 9800 controller as an entry point
for using 9800 controllers

Re: EWC vs Standalone AP

MarB — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 12:33:12 GMT

thank you for the clarification ! i'll look into it

Re: EWC vs Standalone AP

Rich R — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:48:50 GMT

@MarB Plenty of documentation for EWC on AP:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/wireless/embedded-wireless-controller-catalyst-access-points/white-paper-c11-743398.html
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/wireless/catalyst-9800-series-wireless-controllers/nb-o6-embded-wrls-cont-ds-cte-en.html
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/ewc/17-15/config-guide/ewc_cg_17_15.html
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/wireless/embedded-wireless-controller-catalyst-access-points/series.html
As @Mark Elsen says AP Flexconnect Mode allows APs to do local switching (versus central switching where all client traffic is tunnelled to the WLC over CAPWAP). In local switching client traffic breaks out directly onto VLAN on the AP switch port.
Flexconnect local switching is mandatory with EWC - it does not support central switching at all.

The original IOS "standalone" APs were called Autonomous.
After that in the AC Wave 2 APs (1800/2800/3800 etc) Cisco introduced Mobility Express (ME) which ran a very cutdown virtual AireOS WLC on the AP so that it could operate as "standalone" AP+WLC on the AP.
From the WiFi 6 (C91xx) APs EWC used an almost complete version of virtual 9800 IOS-XE WLC effectively running as a virtual machine on the AP, alongside the normal AP software. This again allows it to operate as "standalone". The AP and WLC run as separate machines so they both require an IP address - either from DHCP or statically configured - on the same subnet. The AP then joins the EWC WLC over the network even though both are on the same piece of hardware.
As @Mark Elsen says EWC is EOL so no longer supported in the latest code versions and not at all on the newer WiFi 6E and WiFi 7 APs. So if you use EWC the last version which supports it is 17.15.x

So there is no concept of "standalone" AP anymore.
The AP is either controller managed (Catalyst mode) or Cloud Managed (Meraki mode).
A controller managed AP in Flexconnect Mode can still operate in disconnected (standalone) mode if it loses the CAPWAP connection to the controller but only certain things will work in that situation - see
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless/catalyst-9800-series-wireless-controllers/213945-understand-flexconnect-on-9800-wireless.html
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/technical-reference/cat-9800-flexconnect-branch-deployment-guide-og.html

Re: EWC vs Standalone AP

MarB — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 07:57:10 GMT

Thank you so much that was really informative and helpful! I needed to confirm the support for standalone mode on AP, and I think it's OK to consider FlexConnect even though it doesn't cover all features. I'll be going with that solution

Re: EWC vs Standalone AP

Rich R — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 09:30:03 GMT

You're welcome - glad we could help.

Re: EWC vs Standalone AP

pieterh — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 13:41:17 GMT

one warning,
a single EWC AP in a network, the AP. part of the device will register to its own controller,
and as suchh can be regarded as a stand-alone access point,
but..... if you add another EWC access point in the same network, it will try to register with the controller of the existing accesspoint.
so this is not two-stand-alone AP's!