WLC and AP on different subnets

[cowetacoit]

I would like to add a new AP to my existing controller. Currently i have about 15 AP's connected to a seperate mgt vlan for the AP's, vlan 10. It is trunked to the controller as well as the other user vlans like Private, Public, WVoIP etc. I have already started to implement EIGRP network wide instead of having a large layer 2 vlan'd network. At one of the newest locations i'm routing at, i have a new AP to connect. I'm trying to make sure this design will work before i implement it. So, i have a 3560 connected to my core 4506 with a layer 3 connection. EIGRP running as well. I plan to have the 3560 do intervlan routing with a voice vlan, data and wireless. The problem i see is how can i get the AP to talk with the controller since they are on a different subnets, over a metro E "WAN"? Any suggestions would be great.

[slapham]

I have a similar setup, 462 Cisco 1131's with 6 4404 WLC. Because of the quantity, I have 8 vlans for AP management. With this setup (even thought it is within a campus building) there is still a need for L3 communication for the initial LWAPP setup. What I did is created a VLAN for each floor of our building and connected the 1131 AP's into Cisco 3750 switches. On the VLAN interface on my 6500 I issued the ip Helper-address with the DHCP server (which is also on a different subnet). Within the DHCP scope that I setup I used Option 43 to tell the AP the array of addresses for the controllers. I deployed all AP's very easily. I then set one of my controllers to a MASTER so that initially all AP's would connect to a single controller. Once connected I would program the info for the AP, reboot and then it would join to the Controller of my choice. I hope this helps, and if necessary I can dig through my documentation and point you to the deployment guide.

[cowetacoit]

Well, another forum said use these commands on the remote l3 switch the LAP will be connected to.

ip helper-address 10.0.10.10 - my WLC

!

ip forward-protocol udp 12222

!

ip forward-protocol udp 12223

[sindan]

As long as you have EIGRP configured it will be np. All you have to do is to connect first the AP on the same subnet with the WLC. Once the AP learns the IP and MAC ot the WLC it will start looking for it wherever you place it in your network. The only thing AP will need would be an IP address from an already configured DHCP at the remote location.

[cowetacoit]

So these commands aren't required?

ip helper-address 10.0.10.10 - my WLC

!

ip forward-protocol udp 12222

!

ip forward-protocol udp 12223

Or would it be a good idea to have these on the remote router anyway?

[Scott Fella]

This is okay to keep. Just gives the ap another way of reaching the wlc just in case!

Here is a link that might help:

http://bitmover.org/wireless-lwapp.htm

[soray]

Have you tried resolving to the default WLC DNS name:

DNS discovery-The access point can discover controllers through your domain name server (DNS). For the access point to do so, you must configure your DNS to return controller IP addresses in response to CISCO-LWAPP-CONTROLLER.localdomain, where localdomain is the access point domain name. When an access point receives an IP address and DNS information from a DHCP server, it contacts the DNS to resolve CISCO-LWAPP-CONTROLLER.localdomain. When the DNS sends a list of controller IP addresses, the access point sends discovery requests to the controllers.

This has worked very well for me in the past.