Wireless Access

Hi all,

 I was wondering, what happend if the WLC turns of, does the APs keep working if they are displaying an open SSID??

Regards,

Ivan Vera

With a controller, generally if the controller goes away/goes down, the APs will stop transmitting the SSID and go down until the controller is restored. You can put in a redundant contorller so that if one goes down, the failover picks up the APs and things keep on working (which is what most critical WLANs deploy). 

If the AP is configured as a Remote AP, the SSID's may still broadcast depending on the VAP configuration options (see below).

Always—Permanently enables the virtual AP. Recommended for bridge SSIDs.

Backup—Enables the virtual AP if the remote AP cannot connect to the controller. This SSID is advertised until the controller is reachable. Recommended for bridge SSIDs.

Persistent—Permanently enables the virtual AP after the remote AP initially connects to the controller.
Recommended for 802.1X SSIDs.

Standard—Enables the virtual AP when the remote AP connects to the controller. Recommended for
802.1X, tunneled, and split-tunneled SSIDs. This is the default behavior.

IAPs by theselves are stand-alone APs and don't need a controller. If you terminate IAP-VPN against a controller, if the controller goes down the VPN tunnel is down. If you convert the IAPs to CAPs, when the controller goes down the APs goes down. If you convert the IAPs to RAPs, then Zalion0's comments apply.

Note though that it's not supported to deploy multiple RAPs in the same location as there is no fast roaming or 11r/v handoff support between RAPs. RAPs are meant to be deployed remotely from the controller (ala one single RAP in a branch or small office/home office location, etc). RAPs are NOT meant for deployments where multiple APs are covering large number of users in the same area.