Wireless/Redundant Edge Services xl Module Management and Configuration Guide WS.01.03 or greater

3-15
Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs)
Configuration Options: Normal Versus Advanced Mode
You can use both types of advanced configuration in conjunction. For exam-
ple, you can create a radio adoption default configuration, but then override
that configuration for specific RP radios after they are adopted.
For more security, you could leave the radio adoption default configuration
empty so that newly adopted RP radios do not immediately support your
network’s WLANs. After you decide that an RP is authorized, you can manually
configure the WLAN assignment on its radio or radios.
The following sections supply more information about these two methods.
Manually Assigning WLANs to the Radio Adoption Default
Configuration. Configure the radio adoption default configuration to cus-
tomize the WLANs that the Wireless Edge Services xl Module sends to all
newly adopted radios. This configuration actually divides into two parts—one
for 802.11a radios and one for 802.11bg radios.
Note If you decide to use advanced mode configuration after the module has already
adopted RPs, any WLAN assignments established in the radio adoption default
configurations will not apply to these RPs. You must instead assign the WLANs
to specific radios, as explained in “Manually Assigning WLANs to a Specific
Radio” on page 3-19.
You should configure the radio adoption default configurations when you
want all RPs in your network to support the same WLANs (as they would with
normal mode configuration) but for some reason the normal WLAN assign-
ment is inadequate.
For example:
■ You have added several WLANs to your network. You now want RP
beacons to include one of the new WLANs in preference to one of the old,
but the new WLAN has an index number higher than 4.
■ You have temporarily disabled several WLANs and you want to spread the
others more evenly over the BSSIDs.
■ You want to enable more than 16 WLANs, or more than four open system
WLANs, on a single RP, so you assign some of the WLANs to 802.11a radios
and some to 802.11bg radios.
■ You want to configure different WLAN settings for stations that use
different 802.11 types.
If you are using advanced mode to restrict one WLAN to a certain area, then
you can create WLAN assignments in the radio adoption default configura-
tions for all other, non-restricted WLANs.