L2 Wireless Roaming

[laake9999]

                   For a L2 Cisco Wireless network, is it best practice to configure up Cisco switchport ports connected to Cisco AP's as trunk ports to allow users to roam seamlessly from AP to AP so they can reassociate to the new user vlan? Our Wireless network has a mixture of ports connected to APs configured as access ports and trunk ports. We've noticed some users complaining about not being able to roam seamlessly, and this might because some of our new AP installs are connected to switches that are configured as access ports. I've seen a few variations of reco'd on how to configure up trunk ports connected to an AP, and wanted to know what the best practice to configure up a trunk port to connect to an AP.  I'm not sure if the model matters. But, if it does, we have a mixture of Cisco 1141/1261/1522/1552 APs.

[Scott Fella]

It depends on if you have autonomous or
Lightweight. Autonomous is typically a layer 2 trunk if you have multiple vlan's. If not, then an access port. For lightweight environments, if your AP's are in local mode, then the port is an access port. If your using FlexConnect then it follows the same requirements as autonomous. These are best practices for switchport configurations, but if your ap is connected to a trunk and not an access port (lightweight for example) that will not affect how a client roams and will still work to be honest. Layer 2 roaming works in both autonomous and lightweight.

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[msmith101]

Scott has good advise for the infrastructure side, but don't forget the client aspect here.  Roaming is a client decision, if the issue only seems to affect some of your clients, then take a look at the affected client configuration and driver versions and dig a bit deeper into the actual client behavior.  Cell boundary strength, ap density and antenna selection and interferers can also impact roaming problems.

[Scott Fella · Accepted solution]

Just to add.... if you have a mixture of 802.11n and non 802.11n, that can cause issue with 802.11n clients as they will prefer to roam to an adjacent 802.11n ap and will stick to one than to roam to a non 802.11n access point.

Thanks,

Scott

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