Access Point
Overview:
In the business environment and increasingly in homes, multiple wifi Access Points are used to provide coverage over wide areas and between building floors. Today, these devices are the network. So, learning how to control them and limit the physical areas they cover is of upmost importance. In this document, we only focus on implementing VLAN techniques across them.
Unit Configuration at a glance:
Access Ports:
Do these have Access ports? Yes, the invisible kind! Think of each SSID as playing the same role as an ethernet port would. In our example we show three: Blue, Green, and Red. Blue is for clients that will be accessing the corporate (or home) network, Green could be for guests, and Red would be for things you really want to limit, maybe not even allow them Internet access.
Trunk Ports:
There should always be at least one Purple Trunk per AP connecting back to another Purple Trunk on a switch or router. Our AP will have very minimal configuration, instead the connected clients will be managed by upstream hardware. To us, these hockey pucks are radios and that’s about all.
IP Addressing & Routing:
There is only one bridge managing all the configured VLANs. We set the Base VLAN’s IP address to 192.168.0.3 and the default gateway to our router. If you have very many APs you’ll want to use an Access Point Manager. For now, we hard code in the SSID names and passwords. VLAN ids are assigned to each WiFi interface.
IP Services:
IP Services are managed by our example router. The Purple Trunk port places us on the same network as other devices entering the router. VLAN interfaces running there respond to the ethernet protocol.
How it all works:
Firewall rules keep everyone separate.
AP Config File:
AccessPoint.rsc (4.7 KB)