AireOS to 9800 brownfield migration: AP groups, tags and RRM

[Johannes Luther]

Hi wireless professionals,

base situation:

AireOS WLC 8.10 with some APs, which are organized in AP groups with RF profiles

The new WLC will be a C9800.

So here's the plan:

- Same RF network name on both WLCs, that RRM works and the APs of the different WLCs don't "rogue detect" each other

- Same mobility group and mobility memberships to support fast roaming across the WLCs

In mulitple papers (e.g. BRKEWN-3010 or in the C9800 Radio Resource Management Deployment Guide) it is stated, that the C9800 should have policy and RF tags according to the AP group name in AireOS.

And I don't get the reason for this, because RRM works on a RF group basis. AP groups and RF profiles are irrelevant for this.

Or is the only reason is, that the AP is assigned to the correct tags when the AP switches over from AireOS to IOS-XE (tag assignment method "AP"). So that it has nothing to do with RRM?!

Question is: Does RRM (DCA, CHD, TPC) work correctly if there are 4 APs which sees each other on different WLC platforms in the following configuration:

AP1 and AP2: AireOS WLC#1 (8.10 release)

- RF group: myRFgroup

- AP group: APgroup1 with RF profiles myRFprofile24 and myRFprofile5

AP3 and AP4: IOS-XE WLC#2 (17.3.4 release)

- RF group: myRFgroup

- Site tag: mySiteTag1

- Policy tag: myPolicyTag1

- RF tag: myRFTag1

I bet RRM will work correctly (,right?) because the RF group is the same. Or does it not work?

[JPavonM]

In lot of deployment guides I've seen but also after using the conversion tool, you end up with as many policy and rf profiles as AP groups there were in the AireOS controller.

This practice ends with so many profiles that you need to administer in cae you need to change something globally, for example, the VLAN to forward traffic in case of Flexconnect, or the anchor controller that is assigned in case of an anchored design, or the channels that are assigned to every site.

My approach to c9800 deployment guide has been to create jsut only one policy profile with a generic VLAN name for every case study (central forwarding or flexconnect, or warehouses and offices, or whatever is your case) and one RF profile for every mix of features I want to configure (18Mbps mandatory for HDX, 12MBps mandatory for 1-AP-offices, non-TDWR channels vs all channels, or EMEA channels vs China or Israelk channels, and so forth).

At the end, I've finished with 12 policy profiles and less that 20 RF profiles, and everything works like a charm. Channel and Tx power calculations are good accord to the RF neighbours, and forwarding is good as long as you create per-office Flex profiles with the correct GenericVLAN-2-WLAN mapping.

HTH
-Jesus
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