WLAN subnet sizing recommendations or Best Practices

Excerpts from Mobility Design Guide-

"The default behavior of the WLC is to block broadcast and multicast traffic from being sent out the WLAN to other wireless client devices."

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Mobility/emob41dg/ch2_Arch.html#wp1028269

In most of the WLAN designs it is considered safe to use large subnet sizes if you are not allowing Bcast and not much of Mcast traffic.

As long as the WLC is not propagating Bcast/Mcast traffic and no spanning tree loops, the Mobility subnet sizing is not a constraint for WLAN. Usual recommendation to Large deployments is ---no subnet size more than /20 and /19.

Also it depends so much on the type of traffic specially Bcast/Mcast traffic. So it is NOT advisable to use large subnet size in case of Bcast/Mcast/STP loops in N/W.

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LAP real time functions

One of the most commonly asked question in wireless domain is-

"In Centralized architecture what is the function of AP?"
                             OR
"What information is stored on AP (as thin client in Centralized architecture) and what else on WLC"?

This is what a LAP (Lightweight Access Point/Thin AP) does-

Real-Time 802.11/MAC Functionality:
• Beacon Generation
• Probe Response
• Power management/Packet buffering
• 802.11e/WMM scheduling, queueing
• MAC layer data encryption/decryption
• 802.11 control messages
•Data Encapsulation/De-Encapsulation
•Translational Bridging (H-REAP Local Switching)
•Fragmentation/De-Fragmentation



And Rest is done by WLC which includes (not limited to)-


Non Real-Time 802.11/MAC Functionality:
• Association/Disassociation/Reassociation requests/response
• 802.11e/WMM (Wi-fi Multimedia)
• 802.1X/EAP (Port based authentication)
• Key management
•802.11 Distribution Services
•802.11 STA (Client/Station) Services (Auth/Deauth/Privacy)
•Wired/Wireless Integration Services

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