Questions about Wireless Networking

[yesinkatle6]

So I am relatively new to professional IT. I have been given control of a ton of things with the company I am with. One of those is our Wireless Network. We are not a huge company. About 200 in office workers total. We have 4 main buildings containing the bulk of those employees and a few warehouse with 2-5 people in them.

Currently we have one access point deployed in each building which seems to give enough coverage for the people in them. I have been focused on getting the new APs up and running with the WLC as when I came on with the company that had not been done yet. As I am past that now I am working to get the deeper settings configured on the WLC. One of the things I am a bit foggy on is CleanAir. I have had a few people I know that work in tech rave about it to me. I have been reading up on it and it seems like you need a dedicated CleanAir AP that does not transmit for the network. This seems like it doesn't fit our need. Mostly looking for confirmation here if I am correct on this.

My other question here is does RRM take care of some of the same things in a more limited way without the extra monitors?

Currently we have one AP per location and each AP is in a separate WLAN with its own VLAN. Given that these locations are pretty far apart would it be feasable and/or a good idea to merge these all into a single network with a single SSID so if someone is traveling in the company their devices will link up at all locations with no additional config.

And finally can someone link a guide or reference to setting a guest network that is isolated from the internal network? I will be honest that I have not even done a cursory google search on this issue yet as it is a back burner issue for me at this time.

[Rasika Nayanajith]

Provide a bit more details about your WLC model and AP models being in use.

" I have been reading up on it and it seems like you need a dedicated CleanAir AP that does not transmit for the network."

Not true, CleanAir is a feature available in most Cisco APs and has its own dedicated chip for this function. Client servicing radios (2.4GHz & 5GHz) does not involve in those non-wifi interference detections. Therefore it is a recommended feature to enable on your WLC/AP.

"My other question here is does RRM take care of some of the same things in a more limited way without the extra monitors?"

RRM- Radio Resource Management is a feature of WLC where it controls centrally Power, Channel of APs. In this way, you do not want to manually configure those settings and WLC can dynamically adapt to RF situations. Clean Air is a bit of complementary to RRM where individual AP can take decision based on interference it detects. With RRM, it takes decision for overall network and not look at each AP individually when making those decisions.

"Currently we have one AP per location and each AP is in a separate WLAN with its own VLAN. Given that these locations are pretty far apart would it be feasable and/or a good idea to merge these all into a single network with a single SSID so if someone is traveling in the company their devices will link up at all locations with no additional config."

It is not required to have different SSID/WLAN at each location. You can advertise the same WLAN as long as all those AP managed by the same controller. You can define AP groups for each location for better control which SSID need to advertise at each location (if you require more WLAN).

"and finally can someone link a guide or reference to setting a guest network that is isolated from the internal network? "

Here is a cisco validated design guide for wireless, have a read and see if it make sense for what you have to do.

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/solutions/CVD/Campus/CVD-Campus-LAN-WLAN-Design-Guide-2018JAN.pdf 

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Borderless_Networks/Unified_Access/BYOD_Design_Guide/BYOD_Guest_Wireless_Access.html 

HTH

Rasika

*** Pls rate all useful responses ***