Wireless – Multiple VLANS or single large subnet for WiFi with potential 1500+ users

I would like to setup some sort of staging/prep area for pre-configuring the new access points, conducting inventory, tagging with asset tags, sorting AP by final deployment area, and so on.

In setting up this staging area, is there a better way to prime these AP's quickly and easily? Or are we already doing this in the most efficient manner?

NOTE: I am assuming you're already familiar with loading MIBs on a Windows / Linux machine, and using snmpwalk / snmpset... if not, please let me know

I recently discovered how well you can manage Cisco's LWAPs through the AIRESPACE-WIRELESS-MIB, in fact I have mostly forsaken our WCS in favor of managing our LWAPs with the MIB (we have a couple hundred LWAPs spread across multiple WLCs at our facility).

Since you know Perl, you could write a loop to poll your WLCs for the new LWAPs; then the script reacts accordingly when it sees a new LWAP mac-address on a WLC.

• Loop through a list of all controllers, then poll the LWAPs on each controller with bsnAPEthernetMacAddress (ro). Use the mac-address as the unique identifying key for all activity on this LWAP.
• When you see a new LWAP, print the discovery time / mac-address of the LWAP; then ask the user what hostname / location to assign to this LWAP

• Optionally perform bsnAPClearConfig (rw) using snmpset (note 255.254.253.252.251.250 is the hexidecimal index to bsnAPTable translated into decimal octets); setting bsnAPClearConfig will immediately reboot the LWAP:

  snmpset -v 2c -OXsq -c private -m AIRESPACE-WIRELESS-MIB <WLC_IP> \
    bsnAPClearConfig.255.254.253.252.251.250 integer 1
  

• Assign bsnAPName (rw), bsnAPPrimaryMwarName (rw), bsnAPSecondaryMwarName (rw) using snmpset

• Get the bsnAPSerialNumber (ro); save it to a CSV file along with bsnAPEthernetMacAddress (ro), bsnAPName (rw), bsnAPPrimaryMwarName (rw), and bsnAPSecondaryMwarName (rw)
• Reset the LWAP if required with bsnAPReset (rw)

Using SNMP to manage LWAPs has been helpful, since I can automatically react to changes in LWAP to WLC mappings, as well as when an AP drops offline or gets large error / user counts. I usually poll them all every 15 minutes and record who is on them, as well as recording what LWAPs are on each controller. The WLC is powerful, but I like building custom-reaction scripts and reports.

This sounds like broken broadcast to me.

First, the fact that your laptop works is maybe due to how Windows tend to do strange things with DHCP, like trying a unicast DHCPREQUEST with its previous lease to try to renew it. I assume that it only works in your case because you always connect to the main site before connecting to the remote site, or your laptop was never connected to another network. Try connecting a laptop that has never seen the main network before, or use a LiveCD. I would expect it to not work.

Either fix/configure your wireless bridge to support broadcast (I would look at the AP side, you maybe have to register the client bridge or something) or deploy a DHCP relay on your remote site.