Wireless/Redundant Edge Services xl Module Management and Configuration Guide WS.02.xx and greater

4-3
Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs)
Overview
Overview
A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a LAN that uses a wireless medium; typically it
provides wireless stations a connection to a private LAN, the Internet, or both.
The WLAN might include multiple radio ports (RPs), each of which is identi-
fied by an individual basic service set identifier (BSSID), but supports the
same service set identifier (SSID). Stations associated to one RP can roam to
another RP that provides access to the same WLAN (shares the same SSID).
By default, all RP radios adopted by a ProCurve Wireless Edge Services xl
Module support all WLANs that you enable on that module. In “Configuration
Options: Normal Versus Advanced Mode” on page 4-4, you will learn about
how the module assigns these WLANs to BSSIDs on each RP radio. (This
process may affect which WLANs operate in open and which in closed
system.) Mastering these concepts will help you better design your network,
and is particularly important when you plan to configure more than four
WLANs.
The WLAN defines settings that control the wireless communications. These
range from the method that wireless stations must use to authenticate them-
selves to the encryption algorithms that protect data to the parameters by
which stations compete for access to the wireless medium. When you config-
ure the WLAN, you must choose these settings, as described in “Configuring
a WLAN” on page 4-26 and “Traffic Management (QoS)” on page 4-90.
Because all RPs in a WLAN must agree upon settings, the Wireless Edge
Services xl Module, as a single wireless controller, greatly simplifies configu-
ration. After you configure and enable a WLAN on the module, the module can
automatically configure these settings on all adopted RPs.
The RPs send and receive traffic in these WLANs. The traffic that they receive
from wireless stations, they forward (via Radio Port virtual LANs [VLANs]) to
the Wireless Edge Services xl Module, which assigns this traffic to a VLAN.
The module can:
■ assign all traffic from a WLAN to the same VLAN (manual VLAN assign-
ment)
■ assign traffic to different VLANs depending on the identity of the user that
sent the traffic (dynamic VLAN assignment)
You will learn about both of these options in “VLAN Assignment” on page 4-81.
Note that, instead of assigning traffic to a VLAN, the module can forward it
over a Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnel.