AP Switchport Best Practices

[Scott Pickles]

I know that for central switching the switchport should be access mode, and for FlexConnect the switchport should be a trunk.  However, can't you configure SSIDs to be both centrally switched and locally switched?  Or does FlexConnect exclude centrally switched SSIDs?  The reason I ask is if a trunk CAN support both centrally and locally switched SSIDs, then why wouldn't we just configure everything as a trunk for maximum flexibility?

[ivanchakarov · Accepted solution]

FlexConnect is the mode of the Access Point. You can configure Central switched and Local switched SSIDs on the same FlexConnect AP. The port of the switch has to be trunk with tagged VLANs for the local switching. The Central switch SSID will use the management VLAN.

[Scott Pickles]

ivanchakarov  That's what I thought as well.  Thanks for confirming.  I'll likely use the trunk port settings going forward then in the case my customer wants to enable FlexConnect at some point.  Then I don't have to bother with the switches.

[Scott Fella]

Scott,

I think the reason is the amount of work later on.  I don't see using flex when AP's are local and things are working fine. Setting the ports to trunk is fine, but then you're only defining the one vlan, if the customer later "decides" to try flex, there is still a lot of work adding the vlans to each trunk port.  I prefer a clean install because someone else might come in after your install and get confused with what was done. 

-Scott 

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