Controller Discovery for 39xx AP's and 36xx AP's

[Ty_Kolff]

We are going to be installing a new v10 controller for a client to get their new 39xx AP's connected, however this client has a large count of 36xx AP's on their current controller. We are going to leave the current controller running to service the 36xx AP's. What are the options for controller discovery of the 39xx AP's?

If we change the dns entry for the controller.domain.com will that negatively impact the 36xx AP's even though they are already registered on the old controller? Will we need to have the new AP's in a separate VLAN with it's own DHCP scope using option 78 to point them to the new controller?

[Ty_Kolff]

Thanks for all the responses!

[Craig_Guilmette]

To add to what Paulo said simply add a second dns record in your DNS server for the same name controller.yourdomain and resolve the second entry to the new IP of your new controller. All AP's will be informed there are 2 controllers to connect to but due to the hardware/software requirements they will connect to only the correct one. If you did not have this setup you would simply set the AP access approval to allow ONLY approved AP's to connect and they would show up pending on both and you could accept the AP's on the controller you wish. I would never recommend removing a DNS entry just because the AP's are already connected as we have seen that after a power outage it is possible the AP's will still need that information to find their way back to a controller they have already been configured on.

[Paulo_Francisco]

You should also not require to make any changes to your discovery configuration. V9 controller does not recognize AP39xx, and V10 controller does not recognize AP36xx. So even if the APs see both controllers in the option advertisement they shall only be eligible for registration on the controller with the corresponding release.

[Jeff]

I just did this. My thinking was pretty simple. My 3610 fleet is not going to change much so I am not worried about new ap registration. I was worried about the minor pain of changing my v9 controller name from controller to something else. In the future I may use a CNAME or something to point at controller to be more flexible and teach my techs a more specific name like controller1, controler2, etc.

I went ahead and set up option 78 to point at my v10 controller (named controller10 of course!). Everything is working great. My 3935 and 3965 ap's find the controller very quickly.

I hope this helps,
Jeff