hi everyone my name is Jason Matthew today I'm going to show you how to configure flex connect mode on a Cisco wireless LAN controller so as you know we have multiple IP modes and I covered that in a different video so in that out of that multiple AP modes we have two modes that can serve the clients so one is local mode and that is the default in P mode going to come with the factory default settings and a second one is flex connect mode using flex connect mode you have a lot of options that
you can customize other than a local mode because when you put it in local mode the entire traffic is going through your cap app tunnel and that will terminate on your controller side and controller will publish that to your infrastructure but when we talk about flex connect there is an option for you to just do the locals to change and using that local switching feature if we can directly send the packets out to your infrastructure in the AP side of scenario so this particular mode is widely used in remote location scenarios your controller will be
sitting in at a data center or in your central office and your branch offices will be connected through your van link and this flex connect mode APIs will be working in your branch location so for giving guest access kind of scenario or highly secure networking access you will pum try a bump that traffic through your van link and it will go through your DMC controller or whatever it is the based on your decide but to make that happen you need flex connect ap and flex connect ap can work without a controller in some of the
combinations you can use that but I don't want to cover the entire stuff in this particular video so I will make this one as a part one and here I will show you how to just convert one ap from local mode 2 flex connect mode so here in this particular controller I am going to choose ap with the name of Apple AP local flex and I'm going to change this one into Flex connect more before I change this to flex connect let me show you the same ap in CLA so this is the AP I'm
going to convert into local mode to flex connect from local to flex so before I change that let me show you the interface structure and how this one works and all so this D command shows that this ap is connected to one controller and this controller name is this one and IP address is this and basic stuffs can be find here then show IP into brief is going to give you the interface structure on this controller in this ap so as you can see here you have only one BVI interface that is the interface connected
to both of the radios and you have sorry for that so that is having our direct bridging between those interfaces so now I'm going to change this ap into Flex connect mode and let's see how that is going to affect the interface configuration so let me show you the same interface in the same ap in controller side so this is our ap so let's see what is the so this is the current configuration as you can see here this particular ap is connected as AP mode as local and this is the switch port switch I
am going to like this this which my ap is connected to and it's connected to my switch port 36 so okay so this is the interface previously it was if you are not using flex connect we can directly put it in a excess VLAN and that will work fine without any issues but when we talk about flex connect it can support multiple VLANs and it can support dot 1k encapsulation to support that you have to make sure the switchboard is configured with trunk port like more trunk so here I already configured that mode trunk because
I don't want to see the APS are getting disconnected from the controller because of this change in inside theater video recording so this one is running on will online and to support more trunk is already configured so let me move that ap from local to flex connect so for changing that ap mode from local to flex connect to you you have to come to the general page of the AP then select the AP mode and click apply when you do this a play you can see some instructions will be given to your controller like your
ap from the controller and there are some changes happening in background so as you can see here that BB interface has got changed and random a cat has got to generated and that interface is got generated then you can see the interface structure got changed here so instead of having one interface BVI one now it generated BVI two three four so these many be vague interfaces got enable then you have interfaces created for sub interface is created 4.11 radio side also so this is one change the next I'm going to change one more thing under
WLAN right now all the W lands are centrally searched you don't have anything locally so that means the entire traffic is again go through your controller so let me go and enable local switching for one of the WLAN so I already have two W lands with same and society with the different security combinations and I'm going to enable local switching for this particular SSID and for changing the local switching you have to go to advanced page and select local switching here so this lock this is the command for enabling the local switching on the controller
side so under WLAN you can select this and that will be local switching and you have one more interface that is sorry one more WLAN that is also having this configuration but that is unchecked what this means is whatever data traffic coming through WLAN ID one is going to switch locally by the AP and whatever is coming through the blue line ID to that will get redirected to your controller through captain so here you got the AP and as you can see here this will enter phases VV is and everything is connected and this a
peak is now capable of doing the local switching now next next step is you have to you can see some changes happen when you change the mode of the AP so the first change happen for AP is you got one one more configuration tab here so this is called as flex connect and here you have lot of things that you can change so in this case I'm going to enable VLAN support on the AP side so this is what I said earlier if you want to support multiple W lines with different AP modes this is
the feature you have to use you can enable native VLAN support if you enable that you will get another extra feature called VLAN mapping so this particular ap is connected to VLAN 9 so let me configure nine here then click apply when I click a play here again some changes will happen in AP side as you can see here the VLAN mapping got changed in background the interface has got changed and let me show you the interface structure again so whenever you do this mapping you can see these changes are happening in background your interface
okay one second interfaces are getting updated in background so here one more interface got introduced now so you you created that VLAN mapping you enable the VLAN mapping and there is a sub interface created for VLAN mapping so this is the interface going to send the data traffic to your infrastructure using VLAN tagging so this native VLAN is configured and this the interface is going to use that VLAN tagging so this is the interface got introduced in your controller side so ya on ap side for supporting their local switching ok so that is one next
one is VLAN mapping for Dublin and so here this interface is for AP that is configured through flex connect native VLAN mapping here and now we are going to enable we are going to enable VLAN mappings for doubly lines only the W lands are having local switching enable you will get this option to enable it so as you can see here you have only one SSID and that is coming from WLAN ID 1 w 9 ID 2 is not available here because that local switching is not enabled so ngayon is already mapped here because you
are native VLAN and your WLAN is mapping with same W VLAN ID so don't get confused so we are talking about WLAN VLAN AP and also you just make sure you are getting the right values here okay let me rewind that back so for an example this ap not example in this scenario this ap is connected on a villain wheel and nine and that's an a TV land I am conferring for ap now using this WLAN VLAN mapping so this is the feature called villain mapping under flux connect using this you can choose what is
the VLAN you have to use it for one particular WLAN that is enabled for local switching so here by default it will take the native VLAN ID from your AP and if you want to change that so for an example this one is configured as nine because your ap is participating in iron let me put that as 10 then click apply so when you do this this is going to change something again on the or on your ap side so I click that as we learn 10 and as you can see here one more sub
interface got created so that is gigabit interface VLAN 10 so so this is how ap is going to do VLAN mapping in background how you want to do it in background let me do one thing let me give you one more example by changing the second WLAN into local switching so second WLAN I'm going to change from central switching to local switching I know this one is little confusing but bear with me hey it will it will get stabilized after some time okay so I local flex now you can see under flex connect you have
to double units so one was 10 that is the one previously we configured so whenever I change something on the other side you can see lot of changes are happening in your ap side so these are you are getting supported from AP point of view so now I'm going to enable this particular local switching with WLAN ID hunter sorry VLAN ID hundred for WLAN ID - then click apply again one more change will happen here and you can see interfaces are getting created ok so now you can see 100 is also created and there is
an n VI interface created for same IP and these many changes happen when you enable on that enable the VLAN mapping on the controller side so this is how the interfaces are getting configured on the AP side and how AP's are supporting your local switching scenario in your local like in controller side when you configure the flex connect mode little confusing if you watch this one multiple times you will get the idea and how to configure that and everything will be clear with that multiple watching so it I know it's a little confusing but watch
again and again and you will come to know you analyze with the basic switching theories and you will get know how this VLAN mapping with WLAN is working in background I will cover the next scenarios and how to use flex connect group and all those scenarios in different video for today I'm closing this video and it will be it will be coming as part 1 4 flex connect thank you for watching see you in next video
