wlans in a group (aka am I being stupid)?

Question

hardware: ZD1100, + 12 7363APs in my school (Harrowden) environment.

intention: would like to be able to select groups of laptops and enable/disable wireless access if they are being abused by teachers/pupils. Hoped to achieve this with wlans.

Initial attempt (promising until you get near the end):

15 laptops in RED  cabinet are members of RED acl (contains their MACs only) and join a wlan called RED accessed by that acl.

RED wlan is a member of HARROWDEN wlan group. Fine. Works.

Add in more "colours" to HARROWDEN wlan group, GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE, etc. Fine for 6. Works.

At 7th "colour" addition a message pops up "maximum number of wlans is 6 please deselect other wlans before adding new one".

Background reading tells me 6 is because because ZD originally had mesh enabled (that's a box I'll regret ticking for rest of my life) though not needed or used, drat. Even if mesh had never been enabled max wlans is 8. Double drat.

I have 11 sets of laptops each assigned a "colour" - they all have to be able use all 12 access points so don't think AP groups is way to go (could be wrong). There are other wlans (staff, kindles, guest and more to follow probably) but thought I'd keep it a little simpler by just using the colours as the examples.

Apart from calling me stupid or just over ambitious...is there some way I can do this ie get all those colours to be seen on all my APs?

[note: APs seem to be able to join one only AP group or another so adding HARROWDEN1 to existing HARROWDEN doesn't make the situation any better.]

santosh_bittu · Answer

Hello Max,

The 9.6 version of software for ZD1100 is now available on the support site, although there are a couple of instructions that you are required to have a look at before the upgrade (also present on the support site) .

Kindly use the link below to be directed to the image:

https://support.ruckuswireless.com/pr...

this version of code will give you the ability to create more than 8 WLAN's and will give you more granular control.

All the best

unknown · Answer

9.5.1.0.build 50

I was one of those who had problems when upgrading to 9.6 a month ago (the AP reboot issue) so reverted back to previous f/w.

So I guess I'm waiting for the re-release of 9.6 for ZD1100. With the increased WLAN limit that makes 9.6 a very welcome upgrade.

I was contemplating resetting back to factory default so I could get at least get 8 WLANs which would have given me a little flexibility but nowhere near the granularity I wanted. Plus the reconfiguration was not a pleasant thought (was creating numerous screenshots this AM to give me something to work from).

Thanks for the info.

sid_sok · Answer

Hi Max,

What ZD software version are you running?  It sounds like you are running pre-9.6 code where the total wlan limit is 8.  In 9.6 that limit is increased so you should be able to create a wlan group with up to 27 members.