Local mode AP behind a Mesh Bridge

[Johannes Luther]

Hello Cisco Support Community,

Does someone here run a bridged Cisco mesh network with local mode APs behind a MAP?

Layout:

WLC <--> RAP <-- MESH NETWORK --> MAP <--> Switch <--> Local Mode AP

Is this possible?

[George Stefanick]

I see no technical reason why you could not. As long as the AP can reach the controller and make sure you account for the latency. 

__________________________________________________________________________________________
"Satisfaction does not come from knowing the solution, it comes from knowing why." - Rosalind Franklin
__________________________________________________________________________________________
‎"I'm in a serious relationship with my Wi-Fi. You could say we have a connection."

[Stephen Rodriguez]

you should be able to if you are doing transparent bridging ( dropping all the traffic to the wire and not egress at the WLC).  If you are terminating the MESH to the WLC it won't work as you can't do CAPWAP in CAPWAP

HTH,
Steve

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please remember to rate useful posts, and mark questions as answered

[Saurav Lodh]

Did you follow this link ?

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/wireless/technology/mesh/7.0/design/guide/MeshAP_70.html

[johannesluther]

I'm thinking of a topology like this:

The local mode AP (bottom) should connect to the WLC, over the mesh link.

The AP is in a different VLAN than the mesh APs or the RAP.

I don't quite get the limitation "CAPWAP-over-CAPWAP is not supported".

There is not CAPWAP Data Session between the MAPs or the RAP. The bridge traffic is not encapsulated into CAPWAP, right? If you would sniff the traffic on the air, you'll see just 802.11 frames with 4 MAC addresses.

So my outlined scenario would work, right?

How could there be any case, that CAPWAP is encapsulated in CAPWAP? You would have to connect a wireless bridge (non-mesh) to a MAP or RAP user SSID and connect a local mode CAPWAP AP to this bridge. Then you would have CAPWAP in CAPWAP, right?

[Scott Fella · Accepted solution]

MAP traffics to the RAP gets encapsulated when tunneled to the WLC. So what Steve is saying, if your AP is on the same native vlan as the MESH AP, that would have to be capwap inside capwap. If you use Ethernet bridging and place the AP on a vlan that is not native, then the traffic would get dumped off at the RAP, since the RAP would have to have a trunk connection. You would just have to test it and see if it works or not to be honest. Take a look at the MESH Ethernet bridging docs and try to place the remote AP on a different vlan than the MESH.

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPhone App