Wireless traffic flow query

[palani2010]

If access point is in branch and wlc is on dc with central switching. All control and data connection should use dc internet for internet.

If access point is in branch and wlc is on dc with local switching. All control and data connection should be used like hair pining and use local breakout

note - Access points are in local mode

[Scott Fella · Accepted solution]

You are correct, it really comes down to where you want traffic to go. If you have a lot of AP’s in multiple locations, do you really want to send all your traffic to the DC? You might if you have bandwidth. Some like to keep traffic local so they can either tunnel guest traffic back to the DC using an anchor controller or maybe just use local egress. So it really comes down to your WAN and what is best for you and the amount of access points. It would be the same if you had cloud controllers in Azure or AWS, you don’t want traffic for users coming back to the controller, so you would use FlexConnect local switching. 
local mode = all traffic tunnnels back to the controller

flexconnect central switching = all traffic tunnels back to the controller 

flexconnect local switching = traffic goes out the switch the ap is connected to

[palani2010]

Thanks Scott.

Flex connect local switching means only control traffic sends to wlc and data traffic uses local egress direct without sending to wlc.

[Scott Fella · Accepted solution]

That is correct. That way customers have options depending on their use case. I have implemented both and in some cases like in a campus, you can have multiple controllers and all the APs in the campus buildings would tie back to the controller. You don’t need a controller in every building, but you can, so you decide also depending on your budget.