Solved: FlexConnect Group or AP Group for WLAN advertisment

Brett Verney · ‎03-15-2016

Hi there,

I was wondering what the relationship between Flex Connect Groups and AP groups were.

Is putting a Flex AP in to an AP group necessary for the AP to advertise a WLAN? Even when the WLAN-to-VLAN mapping has been configured under the Flex AP or Flex Group?

-Brett

Freerk Terpstra · ‎03-16-2016

Hi Brett,

There are three different ways for the FlexConnect AP to learn about the VLAN mappings:
1. AP specific
2. Group specific
3. WLAN specific

The AP specific settings (1) are remembered by the access-point but will be reset when the access-point joins a controller where the "local switching" option has been turned off (for example a back-up controller). The FlexConnect group specific settings (2) are pushed every time the access-point joins the controller. The access-point does not know about which FlexConnect group he belongs, so you need to configure all of your controllers manually with the MAC addresses of the FlexConnect access-points. If options 1 and 2 are not configured, the access-point is going to use the VLAN ID which is being used on the interface of the WLAN on the controller (3). If that interface does not have VLAN ID associated with it, it will use the native VLAN ID of the access-point.

As you can see it is not required to use both, but I do recommend to configure both the AP and FlexConnect groups due to the fact that also settings like SSIDs and RF profiles rely on the AP group relation.

Please rate useful posts... :-)

View solution in original post

Freerk Terpstra · ‎03-16-2016

Hi Brett,

There are three different ways for the FlexConnect AP to learn about the VLAN mappings:
1. AP specific
2. Group specific
3. WLAN specific

The AP specific settings (1) are remembered by the access-point but will be reset when the access-point joins a controller where the "local switching" option has been turned off (for example a back-up controller). The FlexConnect group specific settings (2) are pushed every time the access-point joins the controller. The access-point does not know about which FlexConnect group he belongs, so you need to configure all of your controllers manually with the MAC addresses of the FlexConnect access-points. If options 1 and 2 are not configured, the access-point is going to use the VLAN ID which is being used on the interface of the WLAN on the controller (3). If that interface does not have VLAN ID associated with it, it will use the native VLAN ID of the access-point.

As you can see it is not required to use both, but I do recommend to configure both the AP and FlexConnect groups due to the fact that also settings like SSIDs and RF profiles rely on the AP group relation.

Please rate useful posts... :-)

Brett Verney · ‎03-16-2016

This is valuable information... Thanks heaps Freerk!

What happens if a FlexConnect AP is not part of an AP Group? Does it still advertise the WLANs as long as they have been configured with the WLAN-to-VLAN mappings? (either AP specific or Flex Group)

Freerk Terpstra · ‎03-18-2016

Every AP is member of the default AP group as long as you don't use the "out of box" feature. All SSIDs with WLAN ID 1 up to 16 are available and active in that group, this behavior is the same for all AP modes.

Please rate useful posts... :-)