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In this post we will see how to configure mobility in Cisco WLC environment. Here is the topology where we have two WLCs. LWAP-02 register for WLC1 & LWAP-03 registers for WLC2.
First of all you have to configure the “Mobility Group” on the WLC. When doing the initial configuration you have to provide a mobility group name & you can change it later. You have to go to ” Controller -> Mobility Management -> Mobility Groups” section. By clicking “Edit All” you can add member to this mobility group. If you want you can create a new group as well.
Before adding WLC2 into WLC1 mobility group you can get the MAC address & IP information from WLC2. See below WLC2 mobility infomation. By Copy this & paste it into WLC1 mobility group section you can add WLC2 into WLC1 mobility group.
Here is WLC1 Mobility information section once you paste WLC2 info.
Once you hit “Apply” button you will see something like this. Mobility tunnel will not come up immediately.
If you allow short time mobility tunnel come up nicely.
You have to do the same thing on WLC2 to add WLC1 as mobility member. Now if you look take a packet capture of any trunk port goes to WLC you will see mobility communication between these two controllers. As you can see below Mobility Messages exchange (UDP src 16666 dst 16666) in every 30s. These are unicast packets source from WLC’s management interface & destined to other WLC’s mgmt IP address.
This unicast mobility messaging is not efficient if you have multiple controllers in the same mobility group. You can allocate a multicast group address for inter-controller mobility messages. Following screen capture shows how to do this.
Once you configure this group address in all controllers of your mobility group they should able to communicate via this multicast address. Make sure you configure multicast on your WLC first. In this time you will see Mobility messages destined to multicast group address (239.239.239.239 in my example) by taking a packet capture.
In WLC CLI you can use following commands to configure mobility group.
config mobility group domain mrn-cciew config mobility group member add 00:0b:85:40:a1:c0 10.10.112.10 mrn-cciew config mobility multicast-mode enable 239.239.239.239 config mobility group multicast-address mrn-cciew 239.239.239.239
“show mobility summary” can be used to verify.
(WLC2) >show mobility summary Symmetric Mobility Tunneling (current) .......... Enabled Symmetric Mobility Tunneling (after reboot) ..... Enabled Mobility Protocol Port........................... 16666 Default Mobility Domain.......................... mrn-cciew Multicast Mode .................................. Enabled Mobility Domain ID for 802.11r................... 0x4ccd Mobility Keepalive Interval...................... 10 Mobility Keepalive Count......................... 3 Mobility Group Members Configured................ 2 Mobility Control Message DSCP Value.............. 0 Controllers configured in the Mobility Group MAC Address IP Address Group Name Multicast IP Status 00:0b:85:40:a1:c0 10.10.112.10 mrn-cciew 239.239.239.239 Up 00:0b:85:43:d8:60 10.10.111.10 mrn-cciew 239.239.239.239 Up
In next post we will see how to configure Auto Anchor configuration.
Related Posts
1. Wireless Mobility Basics
2. L2- Inter Controller Roaming
3. L3- Inter Controller Roaming
4. WLC – Web Authentication
5. Configuring Auto Anchor
6. Auto-Anchor Foreign Mapping
7. Mobility Ping Tests
8. Configuring Wired Guest
9. Static IP Clients Mobility
mrn-cciew 
Rasika,
Is Mobility Multicast Messaging required for CCKM clients to roam from controller to controller? I yes, does each WLC require a different Multicast Address?
thanks
No, there is no dependency on Mobility Multicast for CCKM.
If you configure multicast for mobility and all of the controllers in same mobility group, you can use single multicast group address for their communication.
If those are in different mobility group, then you can use two different multicast group addresses for those two (local communication) & different group address for inter-group mobility communication.
This post should give some idea on that
https://mrncciew.com/2013/05/20/mobility-config-via-cli/
HTH
Rasika
Rasika,
I am confused on the difference between mobility domains and mobility groups.
I have an older wism farm running 7.0 code and 1131 series access points. They are configured for a mobility domain and mobility group. This farm has an SSID for Vocera.
I stood up a new farm of 5508 WLAN controllers. As soon as I migrated one 1131 series AP to it, it broke Vocera, so I immediately migrated it back to the wism farm.
I do not want to configure the old wism farm to communicated to the new 5508 farm.
The old wism farm’s controllers are all configured for their own mobility group, and Vocera works well.
The new 5508 farm are all configured for their own mobility group, and Vocera appears to work well when the badges are all on the same 5508 farm.
Communication does not work well between the farms. If I change the 5508 farm’s mobility domain to match the wism farm’s domain, will that allow me to migrate the 1131 series APs to the new farm, one-by-one, and not break Vocera communication?
Thanks,
Tim
Hi Tim,
If you require your client to work interim (both old system & new system), then you have to add both controllers in to the mobility list.
Once do that test with 1 unit & make sure it works. If not “debug client mac” could give information why it is not working.
What code you run on your 5508 ? Are these two WLC in same L2 domain or L3 seperated ?
HTH
Rasika
thanks!!!
Hi,
I have a WLC 2504 in one site and a WLC 5508 in another site. I want to configure the 5508 as a backup controller for the APs registered in the 2504, but I don’t want the APs registered to the 5508 using the 2504 as a backup controller.
The molibity feature is the best one in this case? How can I achieve this goal?
Thank you in advance for your attention.
Regards,
Paulo Vinicius de Camargo
You can simply configure the AP High Availability (ie Primary & Secondary controllers config under High Availability tab config of individual AP) for the APs registered to 2504 as primary.
Even those two WLCs are different mobility group it should work.
HTH
Rasika
Hi, Can we have 2 different SSID’s on a WLC use the same mobility group member to get back to the anchor guest DMZ controller that contains that mobility group? Should this work, or do the mobility entries need to be different?
It should work. You require one mobility tunnel between two WLCs.
HTH
Rasika
If enable the multicast messages feature on WLC,Should i enable multicast routing in other devices(switch/router)?
Hi Xian,
Yes, ideally from your WLC to AP, your network should be able to route multicast traffic.
HTH
Rasika
Hi,
I have three WLCs, and all of then are on the same mobility group and rf group. I want to isolate this controllers, one in each mobility group or just to disable the tunnel between then. The question is, what is the impact during the process and after ?
Thanks.