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Wireless Design - WLC Configuration

Daniel Anderson
Level 1
Level 1

Soon to be working on a design for a Wireless installation across one of our buildings. The wireless survery has been completed, and we'll be installing 175 APs, across the 3 floors of the

building.

With regards to the back-end WLC setup, I have a few queries around the WLC configuration. We're looking at implementing the 4400 series of devices, and due to us having nearly 200 APs, we'll need at least 2 x 4404 or 4 x 4402 - I'm assuming its simpler to have fewer devices to make management simpler.

Also, looking at the Cisco reference material, they recommend that a 4404 can support up to 100 APs, with regards configuring the ports on the box, would I need to configure LAG across the WLC

ports in order for it to accomodate all of the Access Points. If we were to go with a scenario of using 2 x 4404 devices, would we be in a position whereby if we lost a Controller, we'd lose

all of the Access Points associated with that Controller? In order for us to have full resiliency, we'd need an additional 4404 controller for the APs to failover on too?

From a licensing perspective, we'll be purchasing a licence to cover 200 APs.

TIA

22 Replies 22

rduke
Level 1
Level 1

When looking at redundancy options I kind of like the N+1 design. You don't have 1 to 1 redundant controllers, you basically have one spare and expect no more than one controller to fail at a time.

One design option that is relatively new is that you can designate the AP priority. I don't think that was an option before version 5.1. If you have a controller failure, and there are more APs than available controllers, at least your critical APs will stay connected. That may not work for your environment, but it is a good feature for me.

The only bad thing about the external controllers is that they take up a lot of switch ports for all the LAG connections.

Thanks for the reply. That was kind of the configuration I was looking at, going with 3 controllers - 2 controllers taking the load of all the Access Points, and a 3rd available in case of a WLC failure.

Looking at the LAG side of things, is that the best design option with regards activating the ports to enable the WLC to manage up to 100 Access Points? Is there an alternate solution people tend to use?

Leo Laohoo
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Hi Daniel,

Do you have a 6500 chassis? Have you considered using a WiSM?

Regarding the 4404, each of the SFP port can support up to 48 AP's (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/wireless/technology/controller/deployment/guide/dep.html#wp1061736). So you might get away with getting one 4404-100 and configuring the each ports to support 48 APs.

Is your building connected over a WAN link? If so, you may want to consider H-REAP. One of the benifits I've noticed is that LAP's become semi-independent of the WLC. For example, when I took down the WLC for maintenance, the LAP still operate normally rather than stop providing wireless service while looking for a WLC to join.

Hope this helps.

The modular option is not something we're able to use. From a design perspective, we'll be implementing 4 x 4402, enabling us to manage a Max. of 200 APs. With the implementation of 170 APs, should we lose a WLC, we'll only lose a small No. of Access Points.

The Wireless configuration will be implemented across a LAN, there will be no WAN connectivity involved.

From a configuration perspective, to allow us to get full AP utilisation on each WLC, is it better to run with LAG, or create an AP Manager interface for each interface we'll be using on the WLCs? My preference at the moment is with LAG, as this seems to be the simpler/tidier method for implementation. Does anyone have any experience/feedback with either method?

Hi Daniel,

"From a design perspective, we'll be implementing 4 x 4402, enabling us to manage a Max. of 200 APs." < --- You mean 2 x 4404-100.

There are some pros and cons regarding creating multiple AP Manager interface. The major selling point for this is that each physical port can manage 48 APs. Therefore a 4404-100 can manage around 192 AP's. The drawside is redundancy. If a port should go down, the AP's should go somewhere else.

I'm planning to deploy a 4404-100 this way (to support about 150 AP's) and for redundancy, I'm going to get a 4402-25.

"From a design perspective, we'll be implementing 4 x 4402, enabling us to manage a Max. of 200 APs." < --- You mean 2 x 4404-100.

No, due to us already having 2 x 4402-50, we'll simply be purchasing another 2 to house all 170 Access Points.

Going back to another point above, you mention that using AP-Manager on an interface, each interface is able to support a Max. or 48 APs, and thus a 4404 could support 192 Access Points. I was under the impression that a device (eg 4404-100) would only support a max of 100 Access Points regardless of the connectivity method used.

The 4404-100 supports 100 AP's max and to get the 100 you must use LAG.

If you do not use LAG, then you max AP drops to I believe 96 total on the 4404-100.

Seth

Daniel

What will you be using the wireless network for?

Data Coverage Only?

VoWiFI?

Location tracking?

Guest Access?

I believe identifying the business requirement will help you decide on the level on resilience and future scalability

You should take a look at the mobility validated design guides

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/ns340/ns414/ns742/ns741/networking_solutions_products_genericcontent0900aecd80601e22.html

Mark

Hi Daniel,

Have a look at this:

Scaling the 440x WLC Beyond 48 Access Points

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/wireless/technology/controller/deployment/guide/dep.html#wp1061736

We setup the 4404 model with about 60 APs. All works well except the phone mobile users like iPhone or Android phone can't access to the internet. All laptop users have no problem.

Thanks for your help.

Good Day!

Need more information about your setup. What model APs, what are the SSID settings? D they get IPs from the DHCP server? Can they ping their gateway?

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPad App

In addition to question asked by blakekrone, are you using any machine authentication mechanism on your wireless network?

If you have the budget I would suggest the 5500 series controllers. The 4400 will not be supported past 7.0.220.0. The 5500 has flexible licensing and is capable of running the latest code and AP's.

Blakedrone and Osita,

thanks for your response. Mobile phone users get IPs from Windows DHCP IP, server with the same setting as laptop users. We use [WPA + WPA2][Auth(PSK)] for security auth. with SSID disabled. Pretty much simple setting. My coworker has android phone and he just tested by pinging gateway and he got no response. But not for laptop windows users. This is my where I am lost.

Thanks guys.

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