motorola wing - load balancing

[Original Poster]

Hello, I am rather new to large scale wireless networking and I am having a few troubles getting load balancing to work on motorola wing AP71XX and was wondering if anyone could help me out? (multiple AP load balancing)

 

maybe listing what steps i need to follow and configuration i need before hand? I will say now these Wing devices are the only motorola and generally standard devices on the network, so just assume they link up on lan via a switch with a random linux dhcp server nothing else can be added to this network

 

any help?? :)

[sc302 Veteran]

You are asking for a lot of things. 

Load balancing - what are your rules for load balancing?  Simple if x amount of people are accessing, deny and move to another ap?  If at a certain utilization load deny and move to another ap? 

Dhcp server???

Nothing else can be added to the network??? Radius maybe?  mac denial maybe?  access lists maybe? 

 

I think if you are asking these questions you may want to refer this to support, if it were cisco and you had a support agreement they would remote in and configure for you.

 

First you need to get a plan together, research your options, and then implement.  This isn't a fly by the seat of your pants install, there is a lot to configure not just on the wireless side but also possibly on your switches and servers.

 

Just for example here was my plan for my wireless install, and this is pretty basic.

 

1.  Setup a radius server for authentication, I want to do PC based authentication vs user based as users change their password and it creates an issue at the password change interval

2.  Setup a certificate store for the computers, push the certificate out to the computers that were going to be used for radius auth

3.  Setup a group to put computers in for the radius rule

4.  Create a Wireless VLAN for wireless clients to give them their own pool of addresses to work on

5.  Setup switch for vlan, configure access point port for switch network vlan as the untagged network and the wireless vlan as the tagged network

6.  Implement wireless controller, setup SSID's for different vlans, one to mirror the existing vlan and the other for the new vlan so that we can move people over to the new wireless easily

7.  Create rules in the wireless controller for load balancing, I am using a simple load balancing option of anything more than 10 users deny access, the client computers will find the next accessible ap in the area (better make sure you have more than 1 servicing the area if you are load balancing, if you don't have more than 1 ap servicing the same area, don't enable load balancing. 

8.  Attach access points to the lan and authorize them on the wireless controller. 

9.  Test configuration with a local ap for functionality. 

10.  Fully deploy after testing is done. 

 

If you notice, this isn't just a slap it in and go setup.  There were multiple configurations done before I even thought about putting an AP in place, placement is another thing that you will need to look at.  There are other steps involved but this is just an outline I followed that I created myself.  In this setup if the computer account in active directory isn't in a specific group (call it wireless access if you want), the computer will not gain access to the network and will be denied based on the radius rule that I created somewhere in step 1, as I said more steps involved and that this was just an outline.

 

this may be a good starting point for you to start your research.

[Original Poster]

You are asking for a lot of things. 

Load balancing - what are your rules for load balancing?  Simple if x amount of people are accessing, deny and move to another ap?  If at a certain utilization load deny and move to another ap? 

Dhcp server???

Nothing else can be added to the network??? Radius maybe?  mac denial maybe?  access lists maybe? 

 

I think if you are asking these questions you may want to refer this to support, if it were cisco and you had a support agreement they would remote in and configure for you.

 

First you need to get a plan together, research your options, and then implement.  This isn't a fly by the seat of your pants install, there is a lot to configure not just on the wireless side but also possibly on your switches and servers.

 

Just for example here was my plan for my wireless install, and this is pretty basic.

 

1.  Setup a radius server for authentication, I want to do PC based authentication vs user based as users change their password and it creates an issue at the password change interval

2.  Setup a certificate store for the computers, push the certificate out to the computers that were going to be used for radius auth

3.  Setup a group to put computers in for the radius rule

4.  Create a Wireless VLAN for wireless clients to give them their own pool of addresses to work on

5.  Setup switch for vlan, configure access point port for switch network vlan as the untagged network and the wireless vlan as the tagged network

6.  Implement wireless controller, setup SSID's for different vlans, one to mirror the existing vlan and the other for the new vlan so that we can move people over to the new wireless easily

7.  Create rules in the wireless controller for load balancing, I am using a simple load balancing option of anything more than 10 users deny access, the client computers will find the next accessible ap in the area (better make sure you have more than 1 servicing the area if you are load balancing, if you don't have more than 1 ap servicing the same area, don't enable load balancing. 

8.  Attach access points to the lan and authorize them on the wireless controller. 

9.  Test configuration with a local ap for functionality. 

10.  Fully deploy after testing is done. 

 

If you notice, this isn't just a slap it in and go setup.  There were multiple configurations done before I even thought about putting an AP in place, placement is another thing that you will need to look at.  There are other steps involved but this is just an outline I followed that I created myself.  In this setup if the computer account in active directory isn't in a specific group (call it wireless access if you want), the computer will not gain access to the network and will be denied based on the radius rule that I created somewhere in step 1, as I said more steps involved and that this was just an outline.

 

this may be a good starting point for you to start your research.

 

 

I will watch that video thank you, yes nothing else can be added to this network, thats all I can say... there is a basic switch, a linux server that acts as a DHCP/router and 3 APs... The 3 APs need to load balance they are open networks, all i want to do is say, if there are more on this one then that one, attatch to that one... or if there are more on that one attatch to this one... I am accepting it may not be flick of a switch, but I cannot add anything else to this network

[sc302 Veteran]

Load balancing doesn't work like a balancing act between the ap's.  It is based on max connections on aps (no more than 2 or 5 or 10), or bandwidth load on the ap...it doesn't work where you have a equal amount of clients on all ap's.  You want to have absolute control you will want to do something where you give access manually to each device on the network, either by radius or by mac address.  If you have a wing controller you may be able to do radius on that.

 

Again, I have not looked into it or have one to really be able to point you in a direction other than a very general idea of where you need to go, configuration will be up to you or wing support.