Wireless Access

First of all, I am new to Aruba and wireless. I work in a school and we work with very limited funds. I wrote a grant and purchased a small wireless system for our three buildings. we are running out of IP addresses each day and I fear it will only get worse. Also, I have one controller only and that is in our high school. It is an Aruba 3400 controller

When I connect to an AP at the MS it pulls an IP address from the DHCP server in the HS even though everything else over there is pulling from the DHCP server in the MS. Same at the elementary. I Just recently noticed this months after it was installed by a company.

Is this something that can be fixed with a setting in the controller or a problem that were going to have simply because I only have one controller?

I don't have the money to buy separate controllers at this time or to time rebuild our scopes.

I apprecitate any info you can give to me to help.

Best Regards,

Grub

What do you mean by MS ?

Couple Questions:

1. When you say connect to an AP, do you mean you are connecting to an active wireless network and the IP you're getting from the wireless network is from the DHCP server at the High School?

2. I assume MS = Middle School, but please clarify.

If #1 above is true - i.e. you are connecting to the wireless network and obtaining an IP from the DHCP server at the HS, then this means that all APs are tunneling traffic back to the main controller and the VLAN associated with the wireless network is from the HS, which is using the HS's DHCP server. Since you have 1 controller and APs at 3 locations, you can do one of 2 things:

1. Setup split tunneling but there may be some negatives that you would have to look at the admin guide to compare split tunnel vs. tunnel mode.

2. If your DHCP scope for this specific network is running out of IPs, then create additional VLANs for the wireless network in question and use VLAN Pooling.

The above assumes a few things about your design but if you have additional questions, post some additional info about your network setup.

I would also highly recommend taking a look at the VRDs for design ideas that would be helpful to your environment.

-Mike