Wireless Access

I advised a customer to purchase a second IAP 205, with possible intentions of adding 2 or 3 more down the road.  They found something cheaper:  An APIN205, which needs a controller.  To make it worse, they didn't tell me they bought it for over a month, and now it's too late to return it.

 

I am new to Arubanetworks, and need advice.  Will an AP205 Controller work for me?  I see it only has one LAN port.  Can a switch be attached to add more controllers llater?  Does this act as a routwer as well?  I don't really need to add that complexity if I can help it.

 

An AP205 can only function with a controller.  It cannot join a cluster of Instant AP, unfortunately.  It also cannot be converted to an Instant AP.

1. I know that.  I'm wondering if the 205 controller will allow me to add a couple more AP's in the future, and if it will work with APIN205, plus the routing issue.

The AP205 isn't a controller. You have two options.

 

1. You only use Instant Access Points (IAP). They can be joined in a cluster so you can add more than 2 access-points together with a maximum of 128 AP's in a single cluster (Aruba Instant VRD)
2. You buy a HPE Aruba Cloud Services Controller, like the 7005. You can add regular and instant access point to a controller and manage the wireless network centrally from the controller. Depending on the number of AP's you can select your controller. The 7005 supports a maximum of 16 AP's and a 7240 supports a maximum of 2048 AP's!!

Data sheets:

• Aruba 7000 Series
• Aruba 7200 Series

My mistake.  I meant A200.  Shown below:

https://www.amazon.com/Aruba-Networks-A200-Wireless-Controller/dp/B00W01FPK2/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1486768858&sr=1-3-fkmr1&keywords=aruba+ap205+controller

 

 

I'm trying to salvage the situation without costing them a lot of money.  They are obviously cost-averse, or they would have purchased the IAP205 I suggested, instead of finding something they thought was the same, but cheaper.

That's an ancient controller. End-of-Sale date is somewhere in 2010.

I checked the data sheet and it looks like the controller supports a maximum of 8 access-points. But it depends (I guess) on the current number of licenses on the controller.

I find it hard to believe that you can buy extra licenses and you should also consider support. End-of-support date is 2015!!!

So I would advice to take the loss and buy a 7005 controller or just buy additional Instant APs and create a virtual cluster.