Wireless Mesh & OSPF

[cbradt]

We have recently put up a mesh network to link some sites a few blocks away to a campus network.  There are two root APs on the campus network and 3 mesh APs, each linking remotes sites.  The mesh is its own subnet, each AP is connected to a L3 switch running OSPF.  The problem we had was when one of the remotes came up and became the OSPF DR.  The other remote sites would form adjacencies with the two roots but never with the DR.  As a result the routes to the non-DR remote sites would never get propagated.

Our fix was to make the L3 switch at all the remotes OSPF priority 0, everything was OK after that.  I seem to be able to ping remote to remote with no problem. My question is why could the remotes not form adjacencies with one another?  Is there a type of traffic that will not pass from a mesh through a root to another mesh?

Thanks ...

[Amjad Abdullah]

You have vlans enabled mesh aps?

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPad App

[cbradt]

No VLANs.  The L3 interfaces and the Mesh APs are all in the same subnet/VLAN.  The interfaces on the switches where the APs are connected are just access ports.

[Stephen Rodriguez · Accepted solution]

what was your multicast mesh mode set to?  normal, in, or in-out?

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/wireless/controller/7.0MR1/configuration/guide/cg_mesh.html#wp1859541

HTH,
Steve

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[cbradt]

The mesh is set to in-out.  Looking at the Mesh Design & Deployment Guide:

In-out mode—The RAP and MAP both multicast but in a different manner:

–In-out mode is the default mode.

–If  multicast packets are received at a MAP over Ethernet, they are sent to  the RAP; however, they are not sent to other MAP over Ethernet, and the  MAP to MAP packets are filtered out of the multicast.

This would answer the question as to why OSPF is behaving this way ... thanks for pointing me in the right direction.