Flexconnect question

[Nneece]

Have a large Flexconnect deployment.  A small number of AP’s per site.  Question, can we put AP’s from multiple sites in the same FC Group to save cfg work?  The concern is how much data traffic is exchanged for key exchange, mobility roaming, etc. amongst the FC AP’s in the same FC Group.  Is the WAN overhead not worth it as we configure sites in 50 states.

We are also starting to deploy Catalyst AP’s on 9800 WLC’s which I understand site tags are roughly equivalent to FC Groups on AireOS WLC’s.  PS- we do not use many FC group features, primarily key caching and WLAN- VLAN mapping.

[joyaljp]

Yes you can add multiple AP's from different sites to the same group, but only in one group. You cannot add the same AP to another group. As for traffic, there wont be much since all the user traffic is switched locally.

[Scott Fella]

It's always a balance of which way should I design and implement and ease of management.  I'm not a fan of may "groups" in general.  If anything can be bundled together, that is what I typically do, because it saves time later.  What you should do, is just look at what you might be missing and make a decision based on those variables.  You might just end up with one or maybe just a few groups to better manage your FlexConnect deployment.  Look at how you will want to upgrade, that will typically help with your final decision, since you can choose a master ap.  This can help if your sites are all over and you maybe want to group a region as an example.