Wireless Access

It is my understanding that in a RAP <-www-> MC enviroment the RAP establishes a IPsec-Tunnel over the Internet in which it communicates with the controller.

Are the following scenarios with tunneled mode correct?

I. The Control Plane Traffic over PAPI is encrypted again inside the aforementioned "outer" IPsec-Tunnel with another IPsec tunnel?

II. User Traffic from a wired port on the RAP is also encrypted again in another IPsec-Tunnel inside the "outer" IPsec-Tunnel?

III. User Traffic via WLAN is encrypted by the client itself via WPA2 and is then routed through the "outer" IPsec-Tunnel via a GRE-Tunnel? (If I understood it correct, there is an option to "double encrypt", so that this WPA2 encrypted traffic can also be encrypted again at the RAP via another IPsec-Tunnel inside the "outer" IPsec-Tunnel).

IV. If I.-III. is wrong: The RAP establishes an "outer" IPsec-Tunnel and just puts the wired traffic, the Data Plane Traffic and the WLAN Traffic in multiple  unencrypted GRE-Tunnels inside the "outer" IPsec-Tunnel?

Please see if this answers your question:  https://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Controller-Based-WLANs/What-is-the-double-encrypt-option-on-a-remote-access-point/ta-p/179558

Thx for the link. But it rises more questions. In the aruba documents it says that wireless traffic is forwarded to the controller via a GRE tunnel since it is already encrypted through WPA. But the traffic that comes from the wired ports of the RAP is encrypted with IPsec at the RAP and then forwarded to the Controller.

So the question still stands: Is there some kind of "outer" IPsec tunnel and the RAP is using multiple IPsec "inner" Tunnels for forwarding the wired traffic to the controller or is this done via multiple GRE tunnels without encryption since there is already an "outer" IPsec Tunnel?

"All GRE traffic, such as, the user data and bootstrap heartbeat, is not encrypted by IPsec, but is still encapsulated by IPsec."   A.K.A. The wired traffic is encapsulated with ipsec, not encrypted with ipsec by default.  Encapsulation is used so that traffic can traverse a NAT device.

Encapsulation is not encryption.  You would have to enable double encrypt to have wired traffic encrypted with ipsec.

Hi guys,

I know this is an old thread, but I think it may serve to others.

As far as I know, and from what I saw in the ACMP student guide, at least in tunnel mode (and in split-tunnel mode for traffic tunneled to the MC), all wired users flows are automatically IPSEC encrypted by the RAP and decrypted by the MC.

From the "RAP Tunnel mode WLAN" chapter :

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S�bastien Grimaldos
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