Maintaining Wireless Services upon HiPath Controller loss

[FAQ_User]

Article ID: 13789

Products
C4110, C5110, C20, C20N, CRBT8110, CRBT82110, C2400
AP3610, AP3620, AP3605, AP2605, RBT-4102(all variants), AP2610, AP2620

Symptoms
Clients drop service during a non-redundant controller outage.
Access Point (AP) reboots during a controller outage and no available backup controller is available.
Remote Access Points across a WAN link reboot when the connection to the controller is offline.

Solution/Workaround
In order to maintain wireless services in the event the HiPath controller goes offline, it is important to understand that the ability to keep the Access Points' clients online with no reboot can only be achieved with a "Bridge at Access Point" topology. The "Bridge at Controller" and "Routed" topologies do not support this ability.

Activation of the "Bridge at Access Point" function must be enabled per Access Point. Use the HiPath Wireless Assistant (Web GUI), found under

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Wireless APs

, select an AP or use multi-edit, then select the "

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Advanced

" tab in the AP Properties Window, and enable these features:

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- Maintain client sessions in event of poll failure

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- Restart service in the absence of controller

Supported Configuration Matrix:

Note: In this matrix, 'B@AP' means "Bridge at Access Point", and 'B@HWC' means "Bridge at Controller". The Access Point Associated clients
VNS - NonAuth VNS - Auth accepts new client still continue to
Encryption Topo_Traffic Topo_Traffic associations. pass traffic.

WPA-PSK, B@AP B@AP Yes Yes
Static WEP
The Controller link going down has no impact on the clients'
ability to roam, associate, or pass traffic.

WPA-PSK, B@HWC B@AP No Yes
Static WEP
The Controller link going down allows already connected clients to
continue to pass traffic; but any new clients coming on during the
outage will fail and any clients that roam from AP to AP will fail.

MAC-Auth, B@AP B@AP No Yes
802.1x,
Web Portal
The Controller link going down allows already connected and
authenticated clients to continue to pass traffic; but any new
clients coming on during the outage will fail and any clients that
roam from AP to AP will fail.

MAC-Auth, B@HWC B@AP No Yes
802.1x,
Web Portal
The Controller link going down allows already connected and
authenticated clients to continue to pass traffic; but any new
clients coming on during the outage will fail and any clients that
roam from AP to AP will fail.

Any Service B@HWC/Routed B@HWC/Routed No No

The Controller link going down provides no services at all; the
Access Point reboots.