Aruba Networks | controllerless managed by Airwave or controller based in the campus

On Tuesday, February 14, 2013 Wireless Field Day#4 delegates were invited by Aruba Networks to visit their company on 1344 Crossman Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA for a 4 hour timeslot presentation.

At 12am we had a quick chat with Keerti, Aruba co-Founder and Pradeep Iyer and Partha Narasimhan, Aruba Fellows followed by Aruba's management tooling AirWave

AirWave:
AirWave provides visibility into everything that affects service quality – Wi-Fi coverage, access points (APs), controllers and the wired network. It also offers tools to improve operations and manage RF security, including user location and mapping, real-time monitoring, proactive alerts, historical reporting, and efficient troubleshooting.
Designed for comprehensive visibility across the entire access network, AirWave supports multiple generations of products from leading vendors – from fat APs to thin, and from legacy 802.11b gear to the latest 802.11n mobile devices.

Some hand on sessions were presented by Rob Gin and Sujatha Mandava.

 

 

 

Controller based and Controller less WiFi:

Presented by Ozer Dondurmacioglu

 

How to select the best archtecture?

* Evolution of the Architectures...

 

Autonomous APs ->

1st Generation: 128 APs, 2,048 devices
2nd Generation: 512 APs, 8,064 devices
3rd Generation: approx. 2000 APs, 32,700 devices

 

Autonomous APs ->

Similar CPU & memory to 1st Generation wireless controllers

 

Aruba believes and supports both options..

 

Controller based solution: Aruba OS (10y) version 6.2, upcoming 6.3

Controllerless solution: Instant OS version 3.2, upcoming 3.3

Data plane: distributed on AP's
Management plane: synchronized AP's, survivable

 

One instant cluster op AP's among a single management VLAN (so 10 VLANs -> 10 instant clusters off AP's)

L3 roaming between them
No limitations

 

One management VLAN for the AP's & one client VLAN for devices, still the client VLAN needs to be one

VLAN for one instant cluster

 

Controllerless network integration: (Branche/Retail)

..if one of the AP's goes down, an other AP assumes the role of cluster management and talking to the Airwave
-> distributed management plane across the AP's

 

Dynamic or static management AP selection on IAP

Edge VLAN's for users and AP's on IAP
Access Switch <-> Distribution/Core (DHCP/DNS)
Management server usually optional but required by some vendors <-> Distribution/Core
Numbers of AP's and Wifi users per controllers group depends on VLAN sizing

 

Controller network integration:

AP Groups
Use existing edge VLAN's for AP's on the Access Switch <-> Distribution/Core
Centralized VLANs and DHCP for Wifi users in one location -> Mobility Controller <-> (DHCP/DNS)
Mobility Controller <-> WLAN wide Broadcast and Multicast controls
Number of APs and Wifi users per Mobility controller depending on model

 

Aruba's vision: Cisco Flex Architecture (one controller managing multiple Remote APs) not the best idea, -> big list price difference.. (Cisco Flex vs Aruba Instant)

 

Aruba's recommendation:

controllerless managed by Airwave or controller based in the campus

...not recommend: a lot of APs in the branche managed by some controller appliance in the datacenter.(roaming failures,WAN failure..)