How to assign a VLAN pool to assign multiple VLANs to an SSID?

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FlyingFrames
Building a reputation

How to assign a VLAN pool to assign multiple VLANs to an SSID?

Employee VLAN currently has more than 500 clients and causing broadcast issues. We are planning to split them into two /24 VLANs say 40 and 50. And then map the employee SSID to a pool of two VLANs.

 

However the UI does not allow to put two VLANs on VLAN ID page of the SSID!

 

How can one achieve that?

 

1 Accepted Solution
AjitKumar
Head in the Cloud

Hi,

 

We have 2 options here (that I can think of).

 

1) You can segregate APs in two groups (Use TAGs to group APs). Assign VLAN as Per the TAGs.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Client_Addressing_and_Bridging/VLAN_Tagging_on_MR_Access_Points

 

 

2) You may Dynamically assign VLANs to users with the help of Radius server.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Client_Addressing_and_Bridging/VLAN_Tagging

 

Regards,
Ajit
AjitsNW@gmail.com
www.ajit.network

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3 Replies 3
AjitKumar
Head in the Cloud

Hi,

 

We have 2 options here (that I can think of).

 

1) You can segregate APs in two groups (Use TAGs to group APs). Assign VLAN as Per the TAGs.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Client_Addressing_and_Bridging/VLAN_Tagging_on_MR_Access_Points

 

 

2) You may Dynamically assign VLANs to users with the help of Radius server.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Client_Addressing_and_Bridging/VLAN_Tagging

 

Regards,
Ajit
AjitsNW@gmail.com
www.ajit.network
PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

@AjitKumar options are good.

 

I think the option that most closely matches what you describe is what Meraki describe as layer 3 roaming.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Client_Addressing_and_Bridging/Layer_3_Roaming

 

Basically put half your APs in one VLAN and the other half in the second.  Make the native VLAN the VLAN you want the user in on the switch port that the AP plugs into.  Leave the VLAN ID blank in the bridging config for the SSID.  Users will be spread across both VLANs but still able to roam.

Hammer
Getting noticed

@FlyingFrames It's important to note two things:

 

Firstly, segmenting traffic with VLANs will limit the impact of broadcast, ARP requests, multicast, etc, on 802.3. This, however, may have a limited effect on 802.11 as the medium (the airtime/channel/RF spectrum) is shared between all devices emitting RF signal. For example, if you have two clients connected to an AP with an SSID called 'Employee', the first client is on VLAN 40 and the second is on VLAN 50. When a broadcast packet is sent on VLAN 40, the device on VLAN 50 will need to wait for the packet to be sent, acknowledged, etc, before it can start to receive or send it's own packets, even though it's on a different VLAN. To avoid this scenario, you need to make sure VLAN 40 is only on certain APs and VLAN 50 on the other APs - this isn't really true load balancing but can work in certain environments.

 

Secondly, designing a network where certain APs can connect clients to VLAN 40 and other APs connect client VLAN 50 can cause roaming issues. I tested the following extensively a few years ago with Windows 7 and iOS clients; maybe my testing is now out of date but I don't believe so. Imagine a scenario where the SSID is called 'Employee', VLAN 40's subnet is 192.168.40.0/24 and VLAN 50's subnet is 192.168.50.0/24. A client is associated to an SSID called 'Employee' on VLAN 40 with an IP of 192.168.40.10 and the client then roams to an AP where it is put into VLAN 50. The client shouldn't do a DHCP request as it thinks it has been connected to the network the whole time. Remember the whole point of roaming is to be quick and drop minimum packets but doing a DHCP request only slows things down. This means that client's NIC will still think it's in VLAN 40 with the IP address of 192.168.40.10 and thus won't be able to communicate with anything within VLAN 50 (as they're on different subnet ranges) and it won't be able to find it's own default gateway (as the DG isn't in VLAN 50). To avoid this scenario you need to make sure the client actually disassociates from the SSID completely before moving between areas that have VLAN 40 and VLAN 50; when the client rejoins the SSID it should action a DHCP request, receive a new IP address in the new VLAN.

 

I personally would look at investigating client isolation, as long as the employee devices don't need to communicate directly with each other. Some vendors, in VHD situations, are actually starting to recommend one large VLAN (i.e. a /8) with client isolation enabled.  Other things to consider are what are your minimum base rates are set at (broadcasts are sent at the MBR), what's the client to AP ratio, is the WiFi network separated from the LAN, any CCI issues and where is the broadcast traffic coming (I've seen networks crippled by one device generating an excessive amount of broadcast traffic).

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