Multi-site design question

[Michael Gerrard]

Hi all,

I'm looking at putting together a design for something that needs to scale out properly. I have:

- 2x 5508 Wireless LAN Controllers in a DC

- 2x HQ sites with 2x SSID's each

- Up to 300x sites running 2x SSID's each.

- The 300 sites will all run Flexconnect with no local WLC. They all run the same 2 SSID's (But just have local subnets and DHCP servers for clients).

- 1 of the SSID's uses standard 802.1X Windows Auth, and the other SSID uses MAC Auth. Both SSID's are all Radio and drop you into the same VLAN, regardless of SSID chosen.

- In all of the 300 sites, you always end up in VLAN 1 (Not my choice!).

In other builds I've seen, the WLC's ended up with an AP Group per site, Interface per site, and then the two SSID's in the WLAN section that ties it all together. The problem I can see with this is that I would end up with over 600 SSID's in the WLANs page - my virtual WLC only seems to go to 512! Even if I can have over 512 SSID's, it's just a bit of a mess!

So my question is, what is the best scaleable way of putting this together? My nirvana would be to have 2 SSID's configured on the system, and then depending on the local site it would just choose the correct interface and VLAN mappings. Flexconnect groups?

Thanks, any advice appreciated!

Michael.

[Sebastian Pusta · Accepted solution]

Hi,

In the sites you can use local switched SSIDs with your flexconnect APs.

For this setup you will need on the WLCs:

-2 SSIDs;

-0 dynamic interfaces;

-1 AP group (you could use the default group too);

-about 12 (300/25) Flexconnect groups - as you can have max. 25 APs per flexconnect group.

Steps:

-create the 2 SSIDs and configure them for flexconnect local switching (Advanced TAB). As they are locally switched you don't need any dynamic interfaces and you can map the management interface to them.

-add the 2 SSIDs  and 300 APs to your AP group (if you created a non default AP group).

-create the number of flexconnect groups needed with the same configuration on all. Add your APs into the groups and map the WLANs to the local VLAN (VLAN 1 in your case).

You will have to decide whether you do central or local authentication on your SSIDs depending on loations of your auth servers.

Best regards,

Sebastian

[Michael Gerrard]

Perfect, thanks Sebastian!