AP's roaming in H-REAP mode with multiple VLAN's

[Danciu marius]

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out if it is possible to configure in one site a wireless setup that goes like this:

One WLC (5508), multiple LAP's in H-REAP mode.

AP's will be splitted in multiple VLAN's belonging to different departments but with the same SSID.

Each VLAN will have it's own DHCP scope.

All AP's are located in the same site and I need to know if it is possible to roam between AP's that belong to different departments??

[Stephen Rodriguez]

Yes, this will work.  When the client roams, they will keep the IP address they had when the first connected, and the WLC will manage the traffic.

Steve

[Danciu marius]

Thank you for your quick answer.

I thought it might work although I do not fully understand the mechanism. What I think happens is that the WLC will create a tunnel betwwen the target AP and host AP and route the traffic using this tunnel. The client "context will not change"

Now what I really don't know is if in H-REAP mode the AP should dump the client traffic at switch port how will the WLC manage the traffic?

[wesleyterry]

To my knowledge, there is still no L3 roaming functionality in HREAP.   If you were Central Switching, then yes, everything you want would work fine.  Basically you would setup the various VLANs on the WLC and then you'd use AP Groups to say that Dept1 APs have clients in vlan X and Dept2 APs have clients in vlan Y. Roaming between APs would just keep you traffic in the original vlan....

But if you are local switching, then you have a problem.   An AP won't tunnel from AP 1 to AP 2  unlike how a WLC would tunnel from WLC1 to WLC2.....  so your client would be dropped into the new vlan  and would have to re-dhcp in order to function....

If you want different client vlans in the same SSID, and the ability to seamlessly roam between those APs where the client retains its subnet/vlan/connection,  I'm fairly sure you're going to have to use central switching back to the WLC...