Wireless Access

Hi,

My question is what is the best practice with the use of AP group

Our company has about 135 locations some big 2000 and some small 1 or 2 users in total about 30000 user. Our controller are locate centrally and all the locations have a good wan connectivity. The plan is to make to ssid 1 corporate/employee and 1 guest. We want to have the same config on all places ( i do not know if this is the best practice) and you same specials. I think we have to use about 3000 or more/less ap's ( ap135)

- is it best to create a ap group per building = so you can make changes per building ( is this nassesery)

- or make a ap group per controller 

- or maybe make one ap group 

- or something else

Thanks

Peter Otten

Hi Peter -

An AP Group is used to group AP's with the same configuration.  

You'll be creating a virtual AP for each SSID in your organization.  Then, you'll map the virtual AP's, an AP system profile, an IDS profile, and port configurations to that AP Group.

So you can create one AP Group for your whole organization, across multiple controllers.  There are a few things to keep in mind with that:

1.)  If ever you want to change the config across the whole enterprise, you can do so by changing the config of that one AP group.

2.)  If you wanted to change the config of a subset of those AP's, you can just create a new AP group and move those AP's into it.

3.)  If a controller fails, your AP's can fail over to another controller only if an AP Group with the same name appears on the new controller.

4.)  If you're not going to have building-specific configurations for your AP's, then there isn't much value in creating an AP group per building.  (Similarly, if AP configs won't differ from controller to controller, then creating controller-specific AP groups doesn't add much value either.)

I hope this helps!

- Jay

Jay thanks for fast response,

But correct me if i'm wrong.

We gone use a lot of locale controllers and in the ap group you assign the ip of your primary locale controller and backup lms controller. So if you have two pair (primary and a backup) of controllers you need two ap group is this correct?

Regard

Peter Otten

Well, not if one controller is always the primary and another is always the backup.

There is a command for entering both a primary and backup controller.  If I wanted to assign a primary and backup controller IP to an AP group, I would enter the following:

ap system-profile "CorporateAP"

lms-ip 10.1.1.200

bkup-lms-ip 10.2.2.200

!

Then, to apply this profile to my AP group, I could add it to my AP group config:

ap-group "CorpAP_Group"

ap-system-profile "CorporateAP"

!

This would have the effect that all AP's in AP Group "CorpAP_Group" will have a primary LMS IP of 10.1.1.200, and a backup LMS IP of 10.2.2.200.

So what if I want to split my AP's?

I have two major sites; one in NYC and one in LA.  I want my East Coast AP's to use NYC as their primary, and LA as their backup.  On the other hand, I want my West Coast AP's to use LA as their primary and NYC as their backup.

In this case, we'll have to define two system profiles, and two AP Groups as follows:

ap system-profile "EastCoastAP"

lms-ip 10.1.1.200

bkup-lms-ip 10.2.2.200

!

ap system-profile "WestCoastAP"

lms-ip 10.2.2.200

bkup-lms-ip 10.1.1.200

!

ap-group "EastAP_Group"

ap-system-profile "EastCoastAP"

!

ap-group "WestAP_Group"

ap-system-profile "WestCoastAP"

!

Now we've achieved the desired result.

I hope this helps!

- Jay

Jay,

Thanks for the explanation.

Your example is very clear,

regard Peter Otten