Technical data

Chapter 16

Wireless Backbones With Enterprise Mesh

Enterprise Mesh is an optional (separately licensed) wireless replacement for the

Ethernet links connecting APs to controllers. Deploy the Enterprise Mesh system to

replace a switched wired backbone with a completely wireless 802.11 backbone,

while providing similar levels of throughput, QoS, and service fidelity. At this time,

AP300/AP400 and AP100 do not support mesh.

The following are Enterprise Mesh features:

 Hierarchical bandwidth architecture

 Dynamic allocation and balancing of the RF spectrum

 Full duplex capability

 Extend virtual cell, QoS, and RF coordination over backbone

 Wireless DS-to-DS (WDS) encapsulation of the Enterprise Mesh traffic

 Backhaul 3DES encryption (end-to-end), configurable per-AP

 Static hop setup in the connectivity tree

 Static backhaul channel setup

 Dataplane Encryption (affects performance because encryption/decryption is in

software)

An Enterprise Mesh instance operates on a preset, static channel (by default, channel

40). The permissible channel range and maximum transmission power per channel is

determined by the country code.

Wireless backhaul security supports automatic keying using Meru Networks Certifi-

cates as well as backhaul encryption. Security is supported via end-to-end 3DES data

tunnel encryption between each AP and controller, as implemented with the data-

plane-encryption command.

Enterprise Mesh Design

Enterprise Mesh is typically composed of hub-and-spoke configurations (as shown in

Figure 36), chain configurations (as shown in Figure 37) or a variation of these.

Within the Enterprise Mesh, on all APs, the 802.11b/g interfaces provide connectivity

for client traffic while the 802.11a radios provide wireless backhaul.

In a dense network, hub-and-spoke (all APs point to the gateway) is the best topology

although collisions can occur.