Wireless Access

We've purchased a handful of AP225s and had a question regarding their uplinks. I see there are different operational modes depending on speed and poe provided. Are people using the dual links right now, or is it intended as a future feature?

If you're running them in dual link mode, do you have to link the prots on the switch side? Are there config changes you need to make on the controller or AP (other than the gre striping mentioned here http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Community-Expert-Day-1-17-14/Link-Aggregation-for-AP-225-Uplinks/m-p/133651#M38 ) ?

Thanks!

The dual uplinks are essentially there so that we could take advantage of the full theoretical throughput of 802.11ac since it exceeds the standard gigabit link. 

If you're running both links on the AP you'll need to have a 802.3ad LACP aggregate setup on the switch that the AP is plugged into. Other than that you should simply have to set the LMS IP and GRE Striping IP in the AP system profile and you should be good to go. 

Great response! Just wanted to add a caveat here since I wasn't aware of this until I had a problem.  Dual links will not provide fault-tolerance if one of your stack members or line cards dies, assuming you're dual-connecting like that for redundancy.  Since only one port is capable of receiving PoE at a time, you will incur a short outage as the AP reboots after losing power from the affected switch/line card.

can you add the gre striping setting to any AP profile? or does every ap in that profile need to have the double links?

I want to add an AP225 with dual links to an existing building, can I just add that gre striping attribute to the existing ap profile without affecting the existing aps?

thanks!

Yes, older APs will ignore it.

I was provided with some Aruba training and this is an excerpt from one of the materials: "For AP 220 and 320 series has two uplinks, then all client traffic on the 2.4 Ghz are passed down one link and likewise the client traffic on the 5Ghz radio is passed down the other link." Is this how the AP acts in practice as I found documentation that discusses LACP which does load balancing. Does each port handle one band individually? Thanks. 

This is if you configure "striping"  http://www.arubanetworks.com/techdocs/ArubaOS_6.4.4.x_WebHelp/Web_Help_Index.htm#ArubaFrameStyles/AP_Config/LACP_Support_on_AP_220.htm

"On AP-200 Series and AP-270 Series access points, different IP addresses are used for different GRE tunnels between the AP and the controller. One controller IP address is used for tunnels corresponding to virtual APs using a 5G radio and the other controller IP address is used for tunnels corresponding to virtual APs using a 2.4G radio. By associating clients on both bands you can achieve more than 1 Gbps throughput."

So each band (2.4/5Ghz) is sent from the AP to a different IP address. Are the IP addresses then statically linked to one of the ports on the AP? Or is LACP load balancing over both ports? Thanks. 

It depends on the load balancing mechanism of the switch on the other side.