Cisco Aironet 3702i remote site Wireless LAN Controller use bandwidth and outages

[jason.cherry1]

I am looking to deploy the Cisco 3702i Controller-Based- Wireless Access Point at my site and control it with a Wireless LAN controller from another site. My questions are: How much bandwidth does this configuration use (talking between the CAP and the Controller) and what will happen if I loss connection with the controller. Will the CAP still work, work on a limited bases, or go completely offline?

[Ric Beeching]

1) Bandwidth usage depends on whether you switch the traffic locally or centrally through the CAPWAP tunnel.

2) See the mobility design guide for bandwidth usage/recommendations:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Mobility/emob73dg/emob73/ch7_HREA.html

Primary Design Requirements

FlexConnect APs are deployed at the Branch site and managed from the Data Center over a WAN link. It is highly recommended that the minimum bandwidth restriction remains 12.8 kbps per AP with the round trip latency no greater than 300 ms for data deployments and 100 ms for data + voice deployments (see Table 7-4 ). The maximum transmission unit (MTU) must be at least 500 bytes.

3) The APs can still work in a standalone mode if the WLC connection goes down however you would need local auth and local switching for the APs to continue to authenticate new users and also service traffic. Without both of those (unless you have no auth) the AP may stay up but can't really do anything until the connection the WLC is restored.