Controllerless Networks

Hi All,

I've configured the following IAP 367 Mesh Portal and Point setup between our two offices directly accross the road from each other:

Question, would it be possible to add a second pair of IAP 367 APs to act as a backup IAP Mesh Portal and Point?  We were initially using another brand of PtP APs however they were found to be part of a faulty batch, therefore we chose the Aruba IAP solution.

Our switches are all Cisco Catalysts.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Adam

So a couple things, IAP (and to a lesser degree AOS, but IAP is far more limited), we cannot do auto port blocking. Aruba Mesh is pure L2 so it's up to you on the wired side to put in the proper L2 aware configs in (redundant-phy, some port blocking mechanism, etc). Otherwise with two active links up, you will have a loop.

Also with IAP, there is no control over the mesh to force Portal1 and Point1 to associate and Portal2 and Point2 to associate. More than likely you will find points going to whatever portal is up first on a reboot, there is just no control over mesh topology with IAP. 

That said, if you DO NOT require specific alignment, and can put in the correct L2 port blocking mechanism supported by your architecture, then you could work fine. Generally, failure rates are low enough not to need that though.