Hello everyone and welcome to our next installment of our Cisco Encore Wireless
section. Now this is something that's going to be down and quick. We're
going to get this done as fast as possible giving you the information you
need. One of the things I would recommend is because of the modern day
and age is to dive into wireless. I mean it's an incredibly fascinating
technology and it is taking over for your end users, right? They're used to it
in their home environments, enterprise environments. It does represent a lot of
risks. There's security issues with it. It's something that you need to pay
attention to and know a little bit more about. So something I do recommend but
for this again we are doing a deep dive into the exam topics for Encore that
include wireless. So a quick easy exam hit, everything you need to know so to
speak. So let's begin. We're talking about the different types of deployments we
can see in our environment. The different type of architectures or deployment
models. What are we looking at or the different types of wireless
configurations that we can see out in the wild. Now when you're talking about
an enterprise environment you're not talking about your home environment.
You're not talking about your little wireless router or your, they call it a
router slash wireless modem. Like that is not what we're talking about for the
most part in enterprises. In enterprises we're talking about usually a controller
based configuration. So what we're going to have are, we advanced too quick there,
what we're going to have are these controllers that control all the little
wireless access points. And if you see here I have this lightweight access
point. I'm going to draw a little antenna here to kind of differentiate it from
the other pieces of equipment. It throws out these wireless signals, right?
But how does it understand its configuration? Well in an environment
such as an enterprise environment usually, and I put the usually there, it
goes back to what's known as a wireless LAN controller or WLC. And what happens
is there's control plane traffic or management plane traffic that takes
place here. It can be both actually. It takes place back and forth between the
lightweight access point and the wireless LAN controller. And we can form
even a tunnel across all of this for that traffic to flow directly from the
lightweight access point to the wireless LAN controller. We'll talk about that a
little bit later. These are called CAPWAP tunnels. But we want a centralized
configuration managed. In smaller environments like your home, you may be
used to having one wireless access point. And you know, you as a user, when you log
in, you're messing with this either through your mobile phone or maybe a
device on the local area network, something like that. But in our
enterprise environments, you may have 10, 15, 20 different access points and you
definitely want a centralized location so that you can do the configuration and
let that controller do the heavy lifting for you instead of you having to log in
to individual access points. So what does this all look like usually? Well here we
have like a campus-wide, this is a pretty large environment, and here we can see
the enterprise distribution or the enterprise core. This is your core network.
So you might have multiple buildings or different floors in a large building or
even multiple areas in a city, depending on your configuration. And what we have
are all these lightweight APs. I'll tell you what a lightweight AP is a little
later, we'll define it. But what we have are these access points that need
information. And they need information on, hey, what am I doing? It will pull all the
way up to this wireless LAN controller and the wireless LAN controller will be
the one that says, okay, you are distributing these SSIDs, these are
the VLANs. So we form these CAPWAP tunnels that go all the way back, and I'm
gonna do a horrible job of drawing this just so you know, but we create these
little tunnels and these tunnels take out all of, you know, the networking stuff
that you're looking at and creates kind of like a point-to-point connection from
the AP to the wireless LAN controller. So you can get things like authorization.
Who's authorized to be on this wireless, this SSID? Well, I know who's
allowed to do that. The people who are allowed to contact this SSID, the
wireless LAN controller knows where to go. So this kind of answers all your
questions for configuration. That's why you need that CAPWAP tunnel that goes
back and forth. Now, it also is a point where the 802.11 frames on your network
get transferred at the Lightweight AP into regular networking, 802.3 or
Ethernet. So remember that in your environment as well. We go from our
Lightweight AP. Once we hit here, we got to change into an 802.3 frame because
we're using a different medium to move the devices, all right? So two things to
remember, CAPWAP tunnels, centralized configuration, and then on the back
burner, remember we're changing frames as we go from 802.11 to 802.3. There's
got to be a conversion there. So this is what's called a centralized
configuration, the one back here that we just saw. So we have an enterprise
distribution core. Now this is cool because I save money. Wireless LAN
controllers are expensive. The WLC is money. So if I can get away with having
one wireless LAN controller in my environment, I'm gonna go ahead
and do that. I'm gonna do what it takes. And by doing that, I mean I'm gonna set
up these CAPWAP tunnels to go all the way to a centralized location for my
organization. So let's call this, oh this is branch office one, and this is branch
office two, and this is central, okay? And then all the high traffic is going up to
the central office. Central office is then doing its, getting everything to the
wireless LAN controller, and all this is taking place in a CAPWAP tunnel. So that
traffic is not intermingling with your regular VLAN traffic or anything else.
It's its own traffic. It's separated. Okay, so this is one solution. What does the
other solution look like? Well the other solution is distributed, and I want you
to get this out of this conversation right now. This is a more expensive model.
But if you look at it, it's kind of more efficient because I'm not going all the
way up into my core anymore for this type of communication. I'm just going
directly to the top of the stack where I am. There's my wireless LAN controller,
there's branch office one again, and here's branch office two, but now that I
have two wireless LAN controllers that control this individually. So what did I
do? I doubled my costs from last time. So not exactly the cheapest solution, in many
ways not really super efficient, but if I have something like a paid link here, if
I have a per packet or traffic based charge on this one, let's say this is
remote Alaska. I'm in remote Alaska and I have a double satellite bounce, and I've
actually done this before. Let's say this is a satellite
bounce, right, and over to Anchorage, and they charge me per megabit that I move
or per kilobit even based on some of those charges. Do I want to have all my
wireless LAN controller in my distribution core? No thank you. That
could get really expensive, especially if I have a ton of users here that are in
that remote location. So it really depends on your environment if it's
cost-effective, but for the most part this is a much more expensive model. It
does save on that traffic moving across different links to the core though. So I
promised you I would talk a little bit about lightweight APs, and here we go.
Lightweight APs are used both by distributed and centralized systems, but
mainly we're looking at an AP that relies on a controller. That's what we're
really looking at. Oh, I already had this down here. It relies on a controller, and
the controller is what configures the AP. Now I want to modify a little bit. Does
it really configure it? Well yes, but you are the one that sets the configuration,
and then the AP is then told by the wireless LAN controller what to do. So if
I say I want the SSID that Stormwind rocks, the controller is the one that
then takes that configuration and replicates it out to the lightweight AP
and updates dynamically as conditions change. So based on your configuration, if
something's changing, it's going to make sure that it is in alignment with that
controller-based configuration that you set up. Now there are two kind of modes
that we need to look at, and we'll dive way more into this later, and I really
want you to know this. This is an important part of the exam. FlexConnect
mode. I'm even going to give you a resource to study outside, but now is not
the time for that. I want you to understand the definition of these two.
Local mode. This just requires wireless LAN connectivity always. Okay, if you lose
wireless LAN connectivity in local mode, you can't have authentication, people
won't be able to connect because the lightweight APs won't know what to
do. FlexConnect mode can still function if the wireless LAN controller cannot be
reached. It's a big difference. That's why it's called FlexConnect mode. Now
there's caveats there. FlexConnect won't be the solve-all problems because
remember those APs, this is the main point here, these APs rely on the
wireless LAN controller. They have a lightweight, they're called lightweight
because they have a lightweight OS. They don't do a lot. Their function is solely
to handle the traffic. They rely on the controller for configuration,
authentication, handoff, SSID, roaming, all sorts of different features in our
enterprise wireless environments are controlled by the controller. So we have
to make sure we understand local mode. If you're set in local mode, those
lightweight APs throw up their hands and say, I have no idea what's going on, I
can't reach the controller, I'm down basically. FlexConnect mode is like, well
I'm gonna kind of function on how I was told to react. What I was told to do, I'm
gonna keep on going and doing that. Now one of the things that's not gonna work
is any authentication for FlexConnect because it will not be able to reach the
wireless LAN controller and our wireless LAN controller is the one that handles
the communication to the RADIUS server or other things that give us that
authentication. Whatever our identity manager is, that's what the wireless LAN
controller communicates to, not the lightweight APs directly.
All right, so AP review. We have autonomous. These are the standalone ones.
Not gonna see this a lot. Remember, if I'm here, I have to manually configure
each one. These have full-on OSs. You point these to RADIUS servers, all sorts
of stuff. So there's a lot going on there. That's a lot of work, but
each AP has the ability to act on its own. That's kind of good because I don't
need a wireless LAN controller. So if I don't have a connection to a wireless LAN
controller, it doesn't matter. I didn't need one to begin with. Everything I need
is contained within the APs. This is more a non-enterprise solution.
Can't handle as much traffic. That's not what they're dedicated for. You know, this
is for your home office. This is for your small office. FlexConnect, we talked about.
That's the one that I'm gonna go with the configuration I was given. I was
given the configuration by the wireless LAN controller. I'm gonna keep doing what
I was told to do. If there's some type of roaming that takes place, if there's
some type, in some cases I'm gonna fail because I need that verification from
the wireless LAN controller and I can't reach it, I'm gonna fall apart. But if I
can reach, if connectivity is good and I can reach the wireless LAN controller, no
problem. I got it. Centralized local and converged. If I have a centralized local
device, that means I have one location I'm going to. The wireless LAN controller
is where? Well, the wireless LAN controller is in my core. Core of my main
office or central office. And then I can reach that, get my configuration, pull it
down. Converged. This is a switch and wireless controller one. It does
everything. And the traffic is distributed at the switch. Instead of
having to go up to this wireless LAN controller, I'm gonna draw this and erase
it. Instead of having to go up there, I can just go up here and any local traffic is
just switched locally. Pretty good. So these are the different kinds of
autonomous, FlexConnect, centralized, and converged architectures that you can see
out there in the wild. These are deployment models. So in those standalone
configurations, what do I need? Well, in a controller-less, when I have no wireless
LAN controller and I have access points and they need to reach the rest of the
world, I gotta configure it just like I did with everything else. I have an
access trunk access link here and then I have a trunk link here. There's a
controller-less configuration. I have an SSID. It moves across this access point,
hits this switch, and then it needs to hit the right VLAN. Okay, what's the VLAN
here? Well, if my wireless, let's say my wireless is VLAN 80. Okay, so I hit
wireless VLAN 80. This port needs to be in 80 and then this needs to be trunked
because I not only need to carry 80 to the distribution switch, but I might be
carrying regular data which might be 90 or 100 or whatever you're using in your
device. This is okay, but again, controller-less is for small deployments. I don't have a
wireless LAN controller I'm pushing to. The AP handles all of it. This is not a
lightweight access point. This is a stand-alone.
So, like we said, in a controller-less, there's no wireless LAN controller and
the AP OS handles the request. So everything I need is right here. Those of
you who think that Meraki is a controller-less configuration, not true.
Meraki is up here in the cloud. I draw the cloud. Okay, that's how the cloud looks.
And then you have your wireless LAN controller. Although they don't call it
that, that's what it is up in the cloud that's helping out. So that's what a
Meraki is. Your home devices use this, the stand-alone AP, and the OS is strong
enough here. Lightweight APs are focused on that traffic. All their processing
power, all of this is focused on traffic so they can handle more traffic than your
regular home AP can or your small office AP can. That's the difference between the
two. I know you guys are thinking, well, it's an enterprise solution. Why aren't
those APs bulkier? They're bulkier, 100%. They're also made to handle 30, 40 users
at a time. These stand-alone controller-less APs are not meant to handle that much
traffic and will bog down if you put them under that much stress. You'll just see it.
The antennas aren't right. The antennas aren't spread right. Consumer deployment
of APs, while great for four or five people, do not scale up to enterprise
environments. So if you are sitting there right now in an environment that you've
actually had consumer-grade APs in there, it's time to upgrade to enterprise APs.
There's a big difference between the two, especially if you have a lot of people. If
you have less than 10 people in your office, don't worry about it. It'll handle
it just fine. So what about a cloud deployment? What does that look like? Well,
that's kind of what we talked about. Those of you who use Meraki, this is a
cloud deployment. This is exactly what it is. In fact, I was in the early, I
wouldn't say it was beta, but before Cisco owned Meraki, we saw the same thing
here, but I was in Alaska, something I alluded to earlier, and the reason why we
didn't go with the solution, we were given the option to go for the solution,
but we didn't, is because of this right here. It goes to your enterprise
server, but what it has to do is it has to go up into the internet and reach the
Meraki servers, because that's where your wireless LAN controller is hosted. So
what happens if you don't reach those servers? I believe it was within
five minutes. I don't really remember. I think it was five minutes. If you don't
reach that cloud controller in five minutes, everything goes down. Your
different devices go down. Now that's not a huge deal here, right? Here in the US,
or mainland, let me change that, United States, mainland United States, you're not
going to go down for five minutes a lot in an enterprise environment, one, and two,
if you're down anyways for your wireless environment, it's not as
hurtful, because most of my resources are online these days, but in Alaska, I'm
going to show you something. It's a little different. We have a lot of local
resources in remote Alaska. That's because we use like a microwave throw.
Remember I showed you that? We use microwave throws a lot, or not even
microwave, we use satellite throws a lot. We do use microwave throws as well,
between sites, and we use satellite throws from, and this not so much anymore,
but used to be, from like Bethel, Alaska, over to Anchorage, because there was no
infrastructure in between. There was no fiber back in those days. So this was a
charged link, right? This cost money, and it was unreliable. It wasn't always up.
I think we paid a lot of money for 100 megabits back then, but this wasn't
always up, it would go down. So this Meraki solution, even though we were
intrigued, and we loved how it worked, and you know, it would be great, for us in
Alaska, losing this connection to the internet was likely, and it happened
on a weekly basis. So we couldn't have our network going up and down, because we
still needed access to these local resources. I had open
directory here that I needed access to, and then we had all the resources for
all the employees there. We didn't have anything cloud storage, just
because of that link. So again, deployments depend a lot on your
organization, the infrastructure available to you. So Meraki, great
solution, loved to deploy it myself, and in fact we have it here at Stormwind, but
in Alaska, was not a good solution for us at the time. So basically, that's what I
have for this section. I really want you to pay attention to that FlexConnect.
That's going to be a big part of the test. Understand when FlexConnect is up,
and when FlexConnect is not going to help you, and we're going to go through
that through different lessons, okay? So we're not done there. I'll give you more
resources as we go through, but understand what FlexConnect is about. We
have that wireless LAN controller. Wireless LAN controller controls
everything in our enterprise environment. If I can't reach the wireless LAN
controller, I'm in local mode, nothing's happening. The AP cannot verify who
needs to be on what SSID, and if they have permissions, or anything like that.
It can't go out to a RADIUS server or anything for authentication and feed
that back to the AP, so big trouble. Big trouble if I can't do what I need to
there. So local mode, you can't reach the wireless LAN controller, the system's
down. If I'm in Flex mode, and I can't reach the wireless LAN controller, I'll
try and keep going as an AP. I'll try and make it happen. I'll operate under the
same settings that I had before. So anybody who's connected in FlexConnect
mode, when the AP loses access to that wireless LAN controller, will
continue to be connected. The problem starts to happen when they try and roam,
or new users want to come online and come into the wireless LAN.
That's when you'll start to see issues. So that's it for this section. I will see
you in the next one. Happy wireless everyone. Bye.