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Nishant

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Unstable WLAN Connectivity - Open Mesh Access Points on Netgear POE Switches

Hi Experts,

We have 20 Open Mesh Wireless Access Points in our building serving over 250+ Clients. Everything was running fine until we added 2 new SSIDs and tagged them on VLANs. These access points are connected to Netgear POE Switches and All these switches are connected to our Netgear Core Switch which is backed by iBoss (Firewall and Filtering) and Sonicwall (As a Router).

After we added two VLANs, our wireless network has been unstable since. We cant airplay to Apple TVs, Cannot connect our wireless computers / iPads to our 2 newly created SSIDs most of the time.

I did the VLAN for the first time and could be doing something wrong on that front. I have tagged the ports where i have access points connected and the ports that connects to the core switch. On Core Switch, i have tagged the ports that connect these switches and the port that connects with the iBoss.

Please let me know if you need any additional information on this issue.
Avatar of Olgierd Ungehojer
Olgierd Ungehojer

It sound like you have VLAN loop. Check first on switches they all you access point with vlans are connected to trunk ports.
Seeing the switch configuration would be ideal (port VLAN memberships mainly). If the APs need to be able to see all of the VLANs, then being on trunk ports make sense as Olgierd mentioned. But also, where exactly did you create the VLANs?
Masnrock and Olgierd are right. All switch ports are in VLAN 1 by default. So, until, you haven't created another VLAN in your network, they were talking each other without any issue. But as you have added VLAN in the network (I am not sure, where you have created it and what port you have used to assign it) is creating all the problems.

To communicate between different VLANs you must have to configure all the switch port connected to APs as Trunk port (Said by Olgierd and Masnrock). This will short out your issue.

To make the switch port trunk, follow the command

S1(config)# interface f0/1
S1(config-if)# switchport mode trunk
Avatar of Nishant

ASKER

Thanks for your replies. I did the tagging again today, i think there were couple of ports that were not tagged for VLAN. I will check the performance today and will update you by end of the day. Do you recommend any settings i should have / or should verify on Sonicwall (Router)?
As long as the VLANs are correctly set up on the Sonicwall, that part should be good. Only tweak you might consider is in the access rules to make sure that the VLANs do not have access to each other. And maybe bandwidth reservations if you feel that is justified.
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