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

[durairaj_pk]

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.

[mark_young_6200]

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.

[primoz_marinsek]

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.

[mark_young_6200]

good to know - thanks Primoz.

[keith_redfield]

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.

[bill_burns_6069]

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.