Cisco FlexConnect use case

[digitaltrance]

Hello all,

I have a customer that is currently using Cisco Wireless gear and is wanting to go to Cisco FlexConnect within their LAN.

From my research it says FlexConnect is geared more towards WAN deployments where you want to minimize the amount of controllers at different branch offices (small, medium, large).

This is their driving force:

"The driving force behind the move to flex connect is the elimination of the congestion caused by all AP traffic needing to go through the controllers.  Once flex connect is applied, each AP will route for itself so that there is no concentrating of the traffic going to the controllers to be routed.  This will allow each AP to be more responsive and alleviate some traffic congestion problems that are associated with the centralized controller model.”

This doesn't really make much sense to me as to how the speeds increase with FlexConnect even though all traffic to the WAN still needs to traverse their core.  The attached diagram shows their speed differences.

Does anyone have an explanation for this, besides possible network architecture issues?

Regards,

Charles

[Scott Fella]

People have done this with 2504's because of the single port being used. Now if people want to believe that this is a better solution than local, then that is okay too, they just need to understand the limitations of FlexConnect. I will not go over this as this is documented everywhere. That being said, as long as the limitations doesn't hinder their requirements, then FlexConnect is okay, but if it does, well, now they understand why local mode is preferred over FlexConnect at times. 

-Scott

[David Watkins]

To add to Scott's statement.  The "concern" people may have when looking at Flex vs. Local on the "2504, specifically" is the 2504 WLCs 1Gbps backplane limitation.  As of 7.4+, even if you setup a multi-port LAG, only 1Gbps is available.  If 1Gbps is not fast enough for the amount of clients you are servicing via the 2504 (not usually a concern), then perhaps you could consider FlexConnect, but you may really want to look in to a 5508 in case you need to maintain the feature set of Local mode APs.