Local vs Remote WLC

[visitor87]

Hello,

i would like to ask for your inputs about management of AP via remote controller using H-REAP.

Are you aware of any Cisco best practise for the number of APs that can be controlled by remote WLC?

Is the only limitation the WAN link bandwidth and latency?

Is there any benefit to use local WLCs on site where internet traffic needs to be then tunneled to anchor/remote WLC instead of using remote WLC only with H-REAP APs?

Thank you for all your answers.

M.

[Scott Fella]

It varies. Bandwidth is always the determining factor along with if you want traffic to be placed locally or tunneled back. If you have resources in the remote site and bandwidth is an issue, then go with h-reap/Flexconnect.

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[visitor87]

Hi Scott,

thank you for your answer.

My question is bit different.
I would like to ask if there is any benefit of having local site WLC (with APs in local mode) for about 20-30 APs currently managed by DC WLC and using Flexconnect for selected SSIDs and tunelled traffic for internet.

WAN bandwidth is not an issue.

Thanks.

[Scott Fella]

If the AP's are in local mode, all traffic goes back to the WLC, you can't select SSID's to stay local.  That is FlexConnect mode which you can specify what is tunned back and what stays local.  If you have a wlc at a site, then typically you want to keep the ap's in local mode.  If you have remote sites, then usually you have them in FlexConnect.  If I have a 50meg or 1 gig connection from a site to the DC which has the WLC, then it is fine to keep the AP's in local mode.  You have to understand that there are limitations to features that are not supported in FlexConnect when comparing to local mode.

Thanks,

Scott

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[Mark Withers]

"Roundtrip latency must not exceed 300 milliseconds (ms) for data..."

From this document, which contains lots of excellent info: http://www.cisco.com/image/gif/paws/71250/h-reap-design-deploy.pdf

[visitor87]

Hi Mark,

yes this document is really helpfull for Flexconnect (H-REAP) understanding and configuration.

On the network i'm refering to is no issue with WAN bandwith or latency. That's why I would like to ask question about design pros and cons of the two possible options (we have several sites with max 20 APs):
     1. Setup 2504 WLC with 25 AP licenses for each site and DC anchor WLC for guest internet access / mobility.
     2. Setup only 5508 WLC with 500 AP licenses to DC and use Flexconnect for selected SSIDs (all other SSIDs will           be switches centrally in DC). 

[Scott Fella]

FlexConnect has some limitations to features. You need to understand this and decide if FlexConnect is what will work or else having a wlc at each site is what you need.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10315/products_tech_note09186a0080b3690b.shtml

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[Abhishek Abhishek]

Please refer to the link-

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk722/tk809/technologies_tech_note09186a008081103d.shtml?referring_site=bodynav#join