Mesh & Remote AP with WLC

[asif.naveed]

Dears

I have 4 WLCs,3 are active and one is backup Controller with AIR-LAP1522HZ-E-K9

So mesh technology i need i-e- One Rap will be connected through ethernet and 5 MAPs will be through wireless with 100 meter radius and start topology.RAP will be in the middle and MAPs arround the RAP as per my understanding.

I saw a documentaion in which we have to use the mac filter option.But at the same time RAP will be act as MAP.What are the options like for RAP we will say you are RAP and MAP and for MAP we will just instruct that you are MAP only and have to communicate with RAP.

Is there any step by step documentation or any suggestion from forum?

Can any one suggest for Option43 and Option 60? and what if we define DHCP on WLC we need options or not ?

For Remote Failiver which parameters we have to consider

Second i have to use Air Magnet.can some one suggest from forum?

Advance Thanks to All

[wg wireless]

Hi there!

The first thing you need to do is put mac addresses of all the APs (RAP and MAPS) in the MAC filtering list of WLC (Using GUI is easier for this). Now you have to get ur APs registered to WLC first before you can declare them RAP or MAP (Default setting is MAP so u need to declare only RAP). There are many ways to get APs registered to the controller, I would share the following two:

1. Priming the APs:

connect ur primary controller to a switch and connect all the APs (RAPs and MAPs) to the same subnet (preferably the same switch). Once  you have put all the MACs in WLC, the APs will  join controller in few minutes. When an AP joins the controller, access it using the gui of the controller and put necessary information like controller IPs and gateway (if u intend to put ur RAP in a different subnet than WLC). Save the configuration and reboot the APs. repeat the procedure for all APs. now the APs are ready to be placed in the  network.

2. Using DHCP option 43 and 60:

This procedure is an alternate to priming. Here u prepare ur DHCP server before you connect ur APs in the network. You have to define a few strings and go through some steps. (cisco website has a very good documents available for the details)

Answering ur question you cannot define these DHCP options on WLC. Reason is when the APs boots for the first time, it needs to find the controller and by default, it generates request to the DHCP server on the network (See   AP booting sequence for details). When we configure DHCP option 43 and 60, we actually place the controller IP address in the DHCP messages for the APs to find WLC. so configuring DHCP 43 on WLC is just like calling someone on phone to get one's phone number (in short, it wont work)