Wireless Access

If the mobility controller dies, gets powered off, or fails, do the AP's continue to function and pass traffic normally?  I want to know if I need to setup a redundant controller configuration in case of failure.

 

Thanks for the help.

Campus access points will reboot after the specified heartbeat interval if they can't reach a controller. You'd want to have a backup controller.

Thanks for the reply.  In the IAP scenario - no controller, is there anything to worry about when one of the AP's fail?  Other than replacing that one of course?

 

Jim

The Instant APs "self-heal". Another Instant AP will become the virtual controller.

What is the default time for the heartbeat between the controller and the AP's?  So I would assume the AP's continue to function until that time, then they reboot.

I believe the default is 1 second. If you increase this counter, the AP may
stay up, but client traffic will stall since the GRE tunnel back to the
controller has been torn down.

Hello,

I have the same question but for an IAP. What is the default time for the heartbeat between the Virtual controller and the slave IAP's. Can we modify the heartbeat timings ?  So, if the master goes down, the virtual controller can quicky move to the other one.

 

My findings: In my case, I have one IAP215 as slave and one IAP325 as master. If I manually bring down the master, Reachability to Virtual controller takes approx 35 seconds to move to the slave IAP.

 

Please suggest.

 

Thanks in advance.

When an Campus AP (CAP) is managed by a controller, it is dependent on that controller. If the controller goes down, the AP immediately stops functioning. You can deploy a secondary controller and enable AP Fast Failover which will let the AP fail from one controller to another within a second or so (the AP maintains tunnels to the primary and the backup controller). The clients will get de-auth?d and have to reconnect, which may take a few seconds, but the process is pretty quick compared to a network down emergency.

this is an old issue but if any one has this problem too, it can help:

For instant controller there is no problem as the other friends told. 

but in CAP (Controller Based Access Points) you have to do the following configs.

(These configurations WON'T work with 802.1x Authentication only works with psk (preshared key)).

 you have to use preshared key example: wpa2 aes with preshared key or wpa etc... for your ssid 

 

1) Configuration > AP configuration > (ap group you use) (default for me) > Wireless Lan > Virtual AP > (your ssid profile)-vap_prof  test-vap_prof (for me) > (switch to Advanced manu tab)

in Advanced menu ;

a) forward mode : Bridge

b)Remote-AP Operation : Always

than apply & save your config 

After all if you do the config like this,if you have a single controller without a backup controller and when your mobility controller stops working or electricty problem or etc.. your AP's will be still working + if you unplug and re-plug electric cable of the AP. it will boot up and you can use your AP too without controller. (my APs were iap and i converted them to CAP mode for these Demo Labs)

 

This scenario works for me fine. I hope it works for your screnario too