Wireless Access

Hi Airheads, we're running 2 x 7210 controllers with HA Fast-Failover (6.5.3.1), each deployed in a different data centre.

We're looking at running our APs at WAN connected sites as RAPs, so that if the WAN dies, bridged mode SSIDs can operate in persistent mode.

Aside from the difference in connnectivity (IPSec UDP/4500 vs PAPI + GRE) are there any deal breaking limitations where RAPs shouldn't be used for a large WAN connected site? (i.e. 30+ APs).

Anything to do with ARM that isn't supported with RAPs?

I understand that HA Fast failover doesn't support RAPs...

Instant APs were really designed for your specific situation; mainly for clusters of site in the distributed enterprise.  If most of the traffic is going to stay local and expecially if you are going to have 30 or more APs at these sites, it is better to have Instant APs with full features like bandwidth contracts and APPRF that is processed locally.  You also would not have to worry if those devices are disconnected from the mothership; only certain types of Remote AP SSIDs can be put into "persistent mode" for connectivity when a connection to the mothership goes down.

ARM is available on RAPS, but since it is processed on the controller, when that connection is severed, ARM stops.  That would not happen with instant APS...

Thanks cjoseph,

Its a bit of a tricky one because there are also 2 tunnelled SSIDs.

In the end we chose to use RAPs as we're only trying to cover ourselves for the very occassional scenario where there is a WAN outage and we can live without ARM etc then.

With instant, the Tunneled SSIDs can use IAP-VPN...http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Controller-less-WLANs/How-to-configure-basic-IAP-VPN-Controller-Configuration/ta-p/175014

Yes we've also had a look at that as one of the options :)