WLC HREAP Local Switching and VLAN allocation

[Paul Wozney]

I have a tale of woe for you who may be considering Hybrid REAP with local switching.

My client has a varied configuration, but the requirements basically screamed HREAP with local switching.  They have 15 sites, had already purchased a single WLC 4404 and they needed between 4 and 24 APs at each of the sites.  Each of these locations are connected by a WAN link of good quality, but only a single link so there is no assurance of availability; the client has local resources so it would be helpful if wireless stayed working during an outage.

So I setup the WLC for HREAP local switching.  I setup AP Groups VLANs, but I noticed it had no effect on the VLAN allocation for HREAP.  This was unfortunate, because not every site has the same VLAN configuration - some sites had a L3 switch and others only a L2 switch.  But I suffered through this and configured each AP manually with the appropriate VLAN mappings.

The infuriating thing, is now that they have bought a second WLC 4404 (they expect to increase the number of APs beyond 100) all these VLAN mappings are messed up when APs connect to the second WLC.  I've been going through them one by one again - it is really unfortunate that the AP Groups VLAN mappings don't apply to HREAP local switching.

I'm going to get back to the next 80 APs - but if some of you have a system for handling the VLAN mappings of a large number of APs please let me know.

pw

[Paul Wozney]

Just an update as I work through this.

Even though I was able to restore service by manually configuring the VLAN mappings on the second controller, when I pushed those APs back to the primary controller the mappings were again screwed up.  I found that if I push an AP back to the primary WLC, without adjusting the VLAN mappings they are restored when the AP registers there.

So to restore service to the sites, I am moving all APs back to the primary WLC and opening a case with TAC.

pw

[Paul Wozney]

Hi,

The TAC helped me work through this.

Apparently the WLAN number is very significant - you'll notice every WLAN created on the WLC has a number associated with the ssid when you create it. On newer versions of code, the number is visible in the web interface - but on the version I'm working on I had to find it in the CLI.  This number is incremental, and the problem I had was that my first WLC had been using numbers 2 and 3 to represent the wireless networks, and the second WLC was using numbers 1 and 2.

To resolve the issue, I created a 'dummy' WLAN on the second controller to take up the position of WLAN 1, and then I recreated my other WLANs in positions 2 and 3.

It is still a whole bunch of work to manage the VLAN mappings.  If anyone comes up with a good way to do this for a lot of APs please let me know!

Paul

[roland.costea]

Hello,

I have a problem with H-REAP configuration and maybe you can help me, if its working for you.

I have a 5508 controller in HQ and a lot of 1242 lap in remote sites.

I have only one SSID (used only in remote sites) and only default vlan 1 in all sites.(a big subnet for every site).

I created only one WLAN on WLC, map it to the management interface (cause there is no need for a dynamic interface cause i will not use SSID locally, i want clients to receive an ip address from the subnet they are trying to connect to), I enabled "H-REAP switching local" from Advanced tab and also from Wireless Tab -> AP->Details-> enable vlan mapping with native vlan 1.

The problem is the AP are registered with the controller, i have L3 connectivity btw controller and AP and also clients cant see any SSID when trying to connect to AP.

The DHCP server is in HQ.

Am I missing smth?

Any help will be really appreciated.

Best regards,

[Vinay Sharma]

Hello Paul,

Please mark the Question as Answered, if the provided information by Roland is correct and it helped. By doing that others can take benefit as well.

Thanks,

Vinay Sharma

Community Manager – Wireless