HREAP Group Benefits

[jason crockett]

I was wondering if someone could lists the benefits of putting APs in HREAP groups. Here is some detail about my network. I have 52 APs in one location. Some of these APs are 1140s and some are 3500s. This location has 9 floors with an average of 6 APs per floor. Give or take a few on certain floors. Some of these floors are consecutive floors so some of the APs bleed through to other floors. These APs have 2 SSIDs. I have one SSID (lets call it WIFI1) that is being broadcasted and is using WPA2 authentication. Clients authenticate through a radius server. This SSID is also in HREAP mode. The other SSID (lets call it GUEST) is not being broadcasted and is using no authentication. This SSID is in local mode. I also have a secondary controller that these APs can fail over to if necessary. Again, I'd like to know what the benefits are if I place these APs in an HREAP group and if there are an issues that an HREAP group may cause in my network. Thanks for any feedback you can provide.

[Scott Fella · Accepted solution]

Jason,

H-REAP Group is used when you are doing EAP 802.1x authentication to help with fast roaming. If you are not using 802.1x, there is no need to have H-REAP Groups.

Thanks,

Scott Fella

Sent from my iPhone

[jason crockett]

Thanks Scott. We are currently using 802.1X+CCKM.

[Scott Fella]

Then that will help. With the 5508's you can have up to 25 AP's in an h-reap group. If you have the flex7500 it is 50 APs. Just keep the AP's grouped like floor 1-4 on on h-reap group and 5-8 on another.

Thanks,

Scott Fella

Sent from my iPhone

[jason crockett]

Here is my understanding of how the HREAP groups work. Please correct me if I am wrong or let me know if there are other benefits outside of this...... When APs are in the same HREAP group a client can roam to any of these APs without having to reauthenticate through the radius server. If they are not in the same HREAP group a user might notice some lag in connectivity because they need to reauthenticate?

[Scott Fella]

Not really... AP's in the same hreap group can cache the EAP info instead of having the info go all the way back I the wlc. If users roam from one ap in a different hreap group, they will do a full re-authentication.

Thanks,

Scott Fella

Sent from my iPhone