Brocade Mobility 5181 Access Point Product Reference Guide (Supporting software release 4.4.0.0) - Manual (Page 397)

Brocade Mobility 5181 Access Point Product Reference Guide 383
53-1002516-01
Supported adaptive AP topologies
10
NOTE
For a dependant AAP, independent WLANs continue to beacon for three days in the absence of a
controller.
Adaptive mesh support
An AAP can extend an AP51x1's existing mesh functionality to a controller managed network. All
mesh APs are configured and managed through the wireless controller. APs without a wired
connection form a mesh backhaul to a repeater or a wired mesh node and then get adopted to the
controller. Mesh nodes with existing wired access get adopted to the controller like a wired AAP.
Mesh AAPs apply configuration changes 300 seconds after the last received controller
configuration message. When the configuration is applied on the Mesh AAP, the radios shutdown
and re-initialize (this process takes less than 2 seconds), forcing associated Clients to be
deauthenticated and the Mesh link will go down. Clients are able to quickly associate, but the Mesh
link will need to be re-established before Clients can pass traffic. This typically takes about 90 to
180 seconds depending on the size of the mesh topology.
NOTE
When mesh is used with AAPs, the "ap-timeout" value needs to be set to a higher value (for example,
180 seconds) so Mesh AAPs remain adopted to the controller during the period when the
configuration is applied and mesh links are re-established.
For an overview of mesh networking and how to configure a Product Name to support mesh, see
“Configuring Mesh Networking” on page 359.
Supported adaptive AP topologies
For this version 2.3.2.0 release of the access point firmware, the following AAP topologies are
supported:
• Extended WLANs only
• Independent WLANs only
• Extended WLANs with independent WLANs
• Extended WLAN with mesh networking
Topology deployment considerations
When reviewing the AAP topologies describes in the section, be cognizant of the following
considerations to optimize the effectiveness of the deployment:
RSS State Independent WLANs Extended WLANs
RSS Enabled WLAN continues beaconing WLAN continues beaconing but AP does allow
clients to associate on that WLAN
RSS Disabled WLAN stops beaconing WLAN stops beaconing