Placing the WLCs

[ramkunta]

Hi,

A quick question on placement of WLCs.

If I am looking at a design to have multiple distribution switches in different buidings of a campus (with Wireless requirement in each building), is it advisible to buy multiple WLCs and place them in each building connecting them to each Distri switch or is it better to buy one central WLC and connect it to core switches?

Kindly advise.

Thanks,
Ram

[Stephen Rodriguez]

It would depend on the number of AP needed in each building as well as the bandwidth I between.

I like having one in each building, that has say 10+ AP, and having the redundant WLC in a central dc.

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[George Stefanick]

I have a similar set up and I went back and forth on this very subject myself. We have 2,500 access points in a downtown location that spans 8 buildings, each with their own distribution (8). These tie back to a central core.

I beleive the WLCs should be placed where the majority of the wired traffic will aggragte to. For use this was back at the core. Most of the traffic was hitting our server farm.

After looking at budget and cost it made the most sense to us to go to a Central model. We did a WLAN distribution off the core.

I dont regret it for a second.Although as technology changes (802.11ac) in the next few years going to a distobution or even a closet controller (vitrual) will be the furture.

fyi --

We have 10 Wisms (5 primary - 5 back up)

We have about 9,000 WiFi clients