topic What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration? in ZoneDirector

What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

durairaj_pk — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 08:22:18 GMT

Hi,

To install a new Ruckus AP's in our sites what are the modes available in those AP's for configuration and how to configure the AP with those Modes.

Pls update on this for better use.

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

primoz_marinsek — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 10:55:47 GMT

What modes are you asking about?

There is only 1 mode with Ruckus products......a working one 🙂

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

durairaj_pk — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 10:40:01 GMT

Hi,

I was asking about these modes Bridge-WAN,Bridge-L2TP Tunnel,Route-WAN.

Since in Products such as TPlink or other outdoor Access-point's there are three modes namely to configure Bridge,Gateway,WISP.

So,What about in Ruckus?

Kindly update on this for effective use.

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

keith_redfield — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:43:59 GMT

@PK, your question is a little too open-ended to answer effectively. The ZoneFlex documentation does fully cover the "modes" the AP (with or without a controller) can support and how to configure them, but that's too much information to provide here.

It might be better if you let us know what your use-case is and then we can answer whether our product can support it.

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

bill_burns_6069 — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 03:52:09 GMT

I'm not sure what you're looking for here...

An AP can be connected to another AP in mesh mode.
An AP can operate in bridged mode (where traffic is dumped directly the the appropriate VLAN(s) on the switch it's connected to)
An AP can operate in tunneled mode where all it's traffic gets encrypted and tunneled back to a controller, and then from the controller to the LAN.

Is that what you were thinking of?

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

mark_young_6200 — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 09:20:13 GMT

what is the overhead in tunneled mode? Is this going to impact performance in any (significant) way and is it preferable to operate in tunneled mode or not?

At first blush, i'd say tunneled mode could only be a good thing - who would NOT want the wireless segment encrypted ? But if this severely impacts performance i could see why you would NOT want this for everyday use on all networks.

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

primoz_marinsek — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 09:26:06 GMT

Use tunnel mode if you want a nice bottleneck on the 1100, otherwise leave it off. One time we've had to use it was with cable APs, the 7761s due to some limitation the DOCSYS.

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

mark_young_6200 — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 09:28:44 GMT

good to know - thanks Primoz.

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

keith_redfield — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 14:29:43 GMT

We do have many customers using tunnel mode, but agree that best practice would be to avoid on the ZD1100 unless absolutely necessary. The ZD3000 and ZD5000 are substantially more powerful controllers.

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

bill_burns_6069 — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 15:23:25 GMT

There aren't that many use cases for tunnel-mode I don't think.
The one major one I can think of is if the VLANs you want to put your wifi traffic on are not present on the switch your AP is connected to.
This might be the case in networks where there's routing at/to the access layer, but you still want all your wifi devices to be in one subnet.
(possibly at a remote location?)

Another possibility:
If you've got a mesh network w/ secured SSIDs:
I don't know if the mesh connections are encrypted, so it might make sense to build an encrypted tunnel back to the controller to keep the data secure.

AFAIK: the tunnel overhead is significant.
Also, tunneling traffic back to a central point is a bottleneck regardless of CPU overhead. (especially when 802.11ac hits) Each AP could push a large fraction of a gigabit's worth of traffic. If your controller only has 1-gig connectivity it could be a bottleneck even with a small number of APs.

Other controller based solutions *require* tunnels because most of their features are implemented in the controller, not the AP.
Ruckus avoids this bottleneck by putting most of the intelligence in the AP itself.

So you don't want to have too many APs in tunnel mode.
Design your environment to avoid it when possible.

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

durairaj_pk — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 13:58:23 GMT

But my question is how you configure the AP to work it in a broadband connection and
to get connected via the same.

There must be some steps to configure Ruckus AP when we use it in a broadband connection.

Pls update me on this.

and I am using ZF7343,ZF7363,ZF7321 Ruckus Models.

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

keith_redfield — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 20:55:19 GMT

@PK - can you let us know what part of the documentation I mentioned above isn't clear?

thx

-Keith

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

primoz_marinsek — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 07:33:07 GMT

@Duariraj, are you talking about using NAT functionality? You have an option to use that.

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

durairaj_pk — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 09:36:25 GMT

@Primoz yes but entirely on NAT but how to work in a home environment with only a broadband connection

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

primoz_marinsek — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 08:20:43 GMT

You have the option of configuring an AP with NAT functionality. You plug it into ISPs modem or switch or whatever you have there, you setup the Internet connection in the GUI and then:

1. Setup local subnets in the menus
2. Setup a WLAN and configure whatever you need PLUS
3. configure "Packet Forwarding" to "Local Subnet NAT and Route to WAN" and choose the local subnet that you've setup earlier
4. Hit apply

For details see page 116 of the indoor AP user manual found here https://support.ruckuswireless.com/pr...

Hope this helps

Re: What are the Modes available in Ruckus AP's for configuration?

michael_brado — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 16:54:18 GMT

Primoz describes how to configure Ruckus APs as a home broadband wireless router correctly.

Another valid reason for tunneling WLAN traffic to your controller is with regard to VoIP,
if the devices' application call manager is located in a data center with the controller.