WLC Country Codes and APs Country Codes

jvasilko · ‎03-03-2017

Recent WAN changes on an account I manage has caused me to rethink AP associations to geographically placed controllers. I have not kept up on more recent feature sets of the latest codes due to the account still having APs that can only handle a certain version of code. With that in mind, I have always been under the assumption that if an AP was purchased for say Argentina, then it had to associate to a controller with that country code configured. With the recent changes mentioned above about the WAN, I recently ran into an issue where a site in Argentina was now connected to the rest of the Intranet by a Masergy internet connection that terminates to a security hub in Dallas.

This change caused latency issues for auths since the APs were associated to a controller in Sao Paulo with the Argentina country code assigned. Now, the issue was resolved by associating these APs to a controller in the US, that does not have Argentina configured. Now the APs associated just fine and are operational, but that caused me pause to wonder what are the new limits for such connectivity.

So my question is about what are the limitations with APs for different regions joining the same controller? I thought from my past understandings that some APs would not be allowed to join a controller if the country code it was programmed for was not present on a controller. If I then added this country code to the controller, then the whole controller takes the least common denominator as far as radio management is concerned. So US Aps would be limited to what the Argentina APs would be allowed to do. Is this still the case? Or can a controller associate any country APs and have them isolated such that each AP can get the maximum radio performance without hurting the others? Does the US controller even have to add any country codes at all anymore if APs like Argentina can join a US controller?

Rasika Nayanajith · ‎03-03-2017

So my question is about what are the limitations with APs for different regions joining the same controller?

If you check below document, you will understand those different regulatory domain (-A, -E, -Z, etc) has their own restriction when it comes to power & channel.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/access_point/channels/lwapp/reference/guide/lw_chp2.pdf

So if you have two different domain country code configured on the same controller, then lowest common value will be used.

HTH

Rasika

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jvasilko · ‎03-06-2017

Thanks for the reply Rasika. I understand the limitations of each AP as it relates to their country code, my concern was about the controllers specifically. You stated at the end about the controllers using the lowest common denominator, and that was my understanding, but after talking to some colleagues, they said that you can associate different country code APs to the same controller, and have them in AP groups where other country code APs will not be degraded due to APs from other country codes. I was not aware of this and thus my question for verification.

So what you are saying is that if I don't want degraded service for all APs, I need to have a controller for each country code for the optimal solution?