Maximum limit of guest tunnels to your anchor controllers

[Shawn Purdy]

I need to confirm or deny some conflicting documentation.  Cisco states that the 4400/5500 series controllers can support 71 anchor connections.  however i have read documentation that a Single anchor controller can support up 40 Ether IP tunnels at one time.   I assume that this is the same thing but i could be wrong.  I sized my guest network to support 284 Guest Tunnels but as read more it appears that I only sized it for 160.  Please let me know if I've understanding Cisco correctly regarding what the actual number of Guest Tunnels i can create per controller. 

[Kayle Miller]

Shawn,

     I maybe incorrect here but my understanding is that a 4400/5500 series wireless controller as an anchor can support a total of 71 anchor connections from up to 40 controllers. It is possible to have a single controller create multiple anchor connections if multiple SSID's are anchored to the controller, since the EOIP tunnels are based on the WLAN not the controller.

     So if you had 40 controllers each with 2 Anchored SSID's going to 1 controllers that's a total of 80 EOIP tunnels from 40 Controllers (ie: 9 of them wouldn't work). Does that make it clearer for you?

HTH

[Shawn Purdy]

It does, but Cisco's documentation isn't. This is my understanding as well.  I'm currently working with my SE to resolve this so that i can determine if ineed to begin budgeting for new hardware.   In my case I have 60 controllers each with one SSID anchored to a centrally located anchor controller.  So I should still have room for 11 more on that controller if I needed to add more....Correct.

[Kayle Miller]

Shawn that is incorrect in my understanding, since your 60 controllers exceed the 40 limit this configuration shouldn't work completely. based on what I have always understood from my SE's was that only 40 of those will work concurrently. You could have all 60 of them pointed at the single controller, but if you had guests on all 60, I believe only 40 of them would work. But you could have multiple SSID's on the 40 Controllers that anchor to the controller upto 71.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Mobility/emob30dg/GstSvc1.html

Anchor Controller Sizing and Scaling

The most cost-effective platform to support guest networking in most enterprise deployments is the Cisco 4400 Series controller. Assuming the controller is being deployed to support guest access and tunnel termination functions only, the 4402 with support for 12 APs is sufficient because it is assumed the controller is not going to be used to manage LWAPP APs in the network.

A single 4400 Series controller can support EoIP tunnels from up to 40 other controllers within the enterprise. Additionally, the 4400 supports up to 2500 simultaneous users and has a forwarding capacity of 2 Gbps.

Although I found this link  Updated in July

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Mobility/emob30dg/GstSvc1.html

That says it no longer matters how many SSID's that it's just 1 EOIP tunnel per controller; interestingly enough the Enterprise Mobility Design Guide 4.1 states only EOIP tunnels from 40 controllers.   So this I think is where your confusion lies. Correct?

Because the documentation is now clear as mud as I dug deeper.

Not sure but this is from the Cisco Press Book - Deploying and Troubleshooting Cisco Wireless Lan Controllers by Mark Gress & lee Johnston

"A single anchor controller can support up to 40 simultaneous Ether IP tunnels at one time. This means you can have 50 foreign controllers anchored to a single anchor controller, but only 40 of the foreign controllers can have active Ether IP tunnels to the DMZ."

So in short it looks like you can have 71 pointed at a single controller but only 40 Simultaneously.

HTH

Message was edited by: Kayle Miller

[Shawn Purdy]

You got it.  That's where i get confused.  When I assumed ownership of our WLAN environment i was told that we had it sized based on 71 anchors per controller.  However as we see it may support 71 connections but only 40 concurrent connection per controller.  Thus saying I have way undersized  environment to support guest wireless.

[Kayle Miller]

That is correct! Personally I'd go with what the book says since Mark Gress and Lee Johnston are pretty high level cisco guys.

Hopefully this helped you out...

[Shawn Purdy]

Thank you for the help.  This is what i needed to know and understand.

Shawn

[Kayle Miller]

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