Cisco Wireless Controller Question 1

[smoyer90]

My boss wants to replace all of our cisco AP's and go with a lightweight system with a controller
has anybody use the controller if so how hard is it to learn? I understand it would be a lot easier to configure one controller then to configure 40 AP's one at a time.

 

[ADB100]

It is pretty easy to be honest. You need to put together your design first though, I can't stress this enough..... Ideally you should have two controllers for redundancy, this does complicate the design slightly however if you do your prep-work it is still pretty easy.
The idea is you can plug an AP in anywhere and via DHCP the AP's learn the controller(s) IP address and register etc. All the configuration (except DHCP) is done on the controller and it is all GUI driven.
If you have existing autonomous Cisco AP's then most of these can be upgraded to LWAPP (I think its a minimum of G-radio AP's - 1100's, 1200's etc). You can either upgrade them individually or use a script to upgrade a batch. There are some issues if the AP's were manufactured without factory-installed certificates as the controller won't by default accept connections from devices with self-signed certificates. However you can add the self-signed certificates to the trust list.

HTH

Andy