WLC 5520 Implemented geographically

[akram.root]

Hello All, 

I am beginner in cisco wireless and i need your help.

I want to deploy this scenario of cisco wlan , with active-active redundancy solution for the two controllers 5520 separated geographicaly one in site 1 and another in the site 2.

The link between all sites through MPLS.

And the DHCP server installed externally.

We need two SSID , one for users , and another for Guest.

We don't want doing the solution SSO.

                             

        1)-How to implement this scenario ?

        2)-As far as i know, we map SSID to a specific VLAN and interface on the controller, now which vlan do the remote users               connect to ? the IP address that the users for a specific SSID must match the WLC interface subnet ?

        3)-Can we use the same address range provided by dhcp for all remote sites ?

        4)-How we can register all aps with controllers ?

         5)-Do users connected by wifi on remote sites use the same network range ?

         6)-How the switchover is done if the site controller 1 down ?

Can you help me please !

Best regards

Akram 

[Scott Fella]

If your controllers are in different locations, if you tunnel any of the ssids back, the interface has to be on the same subnet or else the clients will break. Now if you have two controllers in N+1 and each in a different subnet, it’s better for you to implement FlexConnect where the management is on the controller and the traffic gets placed on the local lab where the ap is connected to.

[Scott Fella]

Let me add some notes to your line items also:

1)-How to implement this scenario ?

It is best to implement FlexConnect in your scenario, because you can still have failover. Each site with a controller would have the AP’s primary to that local site controller and secondary to the other:

Site 1:

WLC-Site-1

AP primary: WLC-Site-1

AP secondary: WLC-Site-2

Site:2

WLC-Site-2

AP primary: WLC-Site-2

AP secondary: WLC-Site-1

2)-As far as i know, we map SSID to a specific VLAN and interface on the controller, now which vlan do the remote users connect to ? the IP address that the users for a specific SSID must match the WLC interface subnet ?

 SSID’s are mapped to a vlan that you specify.  In local mode, you map an ssid to an interface which is local to that controller  in FlexConnect, you map an ssid to a vlan because the AP’s are trunked  

3)-Can we use the same address range provided by dhcp for all remote sites ?

Only if your subjects span both site, which I doubt they do

4)-How we can register all aps with controllers ?

There are guides on that, but the easier is to have the AP’s in the same vlan as the wlc management locally at that site  once joined, you can change the ap management vlan if you wish  

5)-Do users connected by wifi on remote sites use the same network range ?

No unless you are spanning the vlans

6)-How the switchover is done if the site controller 1 down ?

There is a high availability that you define in each ap stating what is the primary and secondary controller  

[akram.root]

Hello Scott ,

Thank you for your reply and your informations , if i don't want to use flexconnect mode , what i can do ?

Best regards

Akram

[Scott Fella]

You need to span all your wireless and management vlans across. If you can’t do that, then you either design for FlexConnect or each site will have a controller but no backup. You can put bot controllers in one location and have one set tunnel all traffic back if you want redundancy, but you might not like that idea. If you want redundancy, then you would have two controllers in each location that handles the site AP’s.

[Leo Laohoo]

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@akram.root wrote:

I am beginner in cisco wireless and i need your help.

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If you want to get this wireless setup right (with the least amount of pain) then get someone who's done this before.