Wireless Access

Hi,

I've been finding information here and there on how to create a Mesh Bridge with Aruba AP's but I can't seem to find the fully functionnal solution. My goal is to connect our main building to our residence area for redundancy purposes. Currently, we have a failing fiber link and we are afraid it will go at any time. I want to setup the bridge so that we can get the fiber link repaired.(2 strands out of 12 are still functionnal).

So the bridge itself is up. I can ping the remote AP(on the residence building), but I need to pass 5 other vlans as a trunk but it simply doesn't work. Since I do have a fiber link, I do need Spanning Tree to be functionnal during the transition. Not sure what I am doing wrong. I see some posts talking about the AAA profile needing to be Authenticated, others talk about the System AP Profile, and then in the Aruba documentation, it simply states to activate the Wired AP Profile and choose bridging as a forwarding mode. 

Is there any clear configuration that can be found somewhere so that I may complete this installation? If you have any more specific details you need, I will gladly answer.

Thanks for the help,

Ben

Also, which OS are you using (Instant or AOS)?

Hi Guys,

Victor, I am using the Eth0 port, but by your questioning, I am guessing I can/should be using Eth1 to pass the trunk information,while leaving the Mesh configuration on Eth0?

Jerrod, I am using 6.4.3.7 AOS. The AP on the main building is connected to the controller. The remote AP is also on the controller, connecting through the Mesh Bridge.

Thanks,

You can potentially make it work on either port but I usually try to stay away from the default port and use the secondary for any additional config.

Is your config looking similar to this :

If you are running tunnel model, you would configure the native VLAN for the vlan that the AP is in (or leave it at '1'), set it for trunk, and add the vlans you want to backhaul over the link to the ethernet profile applied to ETH0 or 1. It really won't matter whether you use ETH0 or 1, for the trunk data, if it makes it easiesr for you to have a dedicated Trunk interface and a seaprate access VLAN for the APs on seaparate interfaces, that's fine. Most people though don't run 2 ethernet cables to each AP for cost reasons. Can you post your config or screenshots of the ethernet profile applied to your mesh APs?

Hi guys,

thanks for the quick replies. I did actually pass 2 Ethernet cables during initial installation, so I might as well use them. I put some configurations back to default simply because I had played too much with it.

The Wired AP profile you see in the attachment was modified to be only on Eth1, while Eth0 stays an access port for the AP. I will reboot the AP's and see if communication is still active.

Since you are running in Bridge mode, you are 100% positive you have all the tagged VLANs configured on BOTH the point's uplink port on the point's switch AND the portal's uplink port on the portal's switch?

A quick test would be to configure those VLANs on the controller's uplink port and change it to tunnel mode. If tunnel works then you know the point's uplink is good and the portal's is not. If it doesn't work in tunnel mode then your point's uplink port is misconfigured or the controller is (or both). 

Hi guys,

I just want to confirm what is happening right now. I applied a different Wired AP Profile on Eth1 so that my trunk vlans (55,551,552,882,978,979,999) go through, while leaving 259(AP management vlan) as an access port on Eth0. From what I can tell, Eth0 and Eth1 are synched together. The profile of one goes for the other. So how can I leave Eth0 as default access configuration, while getting a trunk configuration for Eth1? Is there a way to split up the configuration so that both profiles are different?

You just create two groups, one that has the config you want for ETH0 and another that has the config for ETH1, and then apply accordingly. If you are modifying the same profile that is applied to both, that won't work, as it will modify and change both ETH0 and ETH1. You want a unique profile on each interface separately.

Hi Jerrod,

took me a couple of minutes to figure out what you meant by ''two groups'' but I got it. As far as the options available under the profile(see attached). Should I give the bridge an authenticated role and activate Spanning-tree or should this not be necessary?