Setting up network for WLC 4402

[jdodson]

All Cisco docs talk about "trunking Vlans between switches when using the WLC. My customer is running Layer 3 and doesn't want to do trunking. Will the WLC still communicate with the AP's is we did say "tunneling" between the switches? In other words, do you have to use trunking?

[jackyoung]

No, the VLAN trunking is required to enable at the LAN switch side that there is no way to disable the VLAN trunking (802.1q) at WLC. You can just turn on the trunking at the port that is connecting to the WLC and enable the L3 routing to route those wireless VLANs and your production VLANs.

[stevanp]

Bad news: The answer is yes, you do have to use trunking on the switch connecting to the WLC.

Good news: You can configure seperate VLANs to be assigned to WLANs and have those trunk interfaces defined right on the switch to which the WLC connects without having those trunked throughout your network. In other words, have the VLANs extend into the WLAN and terminate right on the end switch.

We have this configured within our network and are very happy with the end result.