DEMO: WLC Setup

Starting the Initial Configuration

We're going to do the initial configuration of a Cisco wireless LAN controller. Specifically, I've got a CT2504 wireless LAN controller here. I've wiped out the configuration of my Cisco wireless LAN controller already, so we're starting with a blank slate. What I need to do to do the initial configuration is console into the device to do a few setups, and then we're going to do the rest of it through a web interface.

Here I have a console cable plugged into this device and it's gone through its startup already. The first thing it asks me is, would you like to terminate auto install? If I were to type in no here, then what would happen is it would go out and look for a TFTP server and then do an auto install off of a configuration file. But that's not what we want, so I can type in yes here — or the default actually is yes. Since the default here is yes, I'm going to go ahead and just hit enter and then continue on with the rest of the configuration of this.

My next step here is to give it a system name. It needs to be 31 characters max, and the default is Cisco underscore and part of the MAC address there. What I'm going to call this is HQ-wlc, and then I always like to add something like zero zero one to it, or zero one, or some sort of designator to it, so if I would ever replace this then it would just sequentially go up. So I'm just going to call this 01 for now — or actually, I'll probably just call it one, so this is wireless LAN controller one. I'm going to hit enter.

Now it's going to ask me to enter the administrative username, so I've got to come up with the admin username. I'm going to call this wlcadmin, so I'm going to right click this right here, copy this, and paste it into here, and then hit enter. It also needs a password for this, of course, so I'm going to do the same thing with the password: I'll copy the password, paste it into here, and hit enter. I have to re-enter the password, so I'll re-enter the password and hit enter for that.

The next step here is, do I want to enable link aggregation? There could be a lot of traffic that goes across this wireless LAN controller, and I may need more than one link to facilitate all of that traffic, but I'm not going to set that up this way. I'm just going to use one port for now for my communication, so for this I'm going to type in no and hit enter.

The Management Interface

The next thing it's asking me for is a management IP or Internet IP address, so I need some sort of IP address that's going to be my management IP address. I've already come up with one and it's going to be 10.1.10.5. This is part of my management network, so it will be part of my management network. I'm going to right click on that and say copy, I'll paste it into here, and there we have it.

Management interface network: 255.255.255.0. I'll hit enter for that. Management interface default router: the default router on this network is 10.1.10.1, so I'll hit enter for that.

Then it is asking for a VLAN identifier — management interface VLAN identifier, where zero is untagged. This is going to be a trunk line going to my network. I've already got it actually plugged into the switch, so I'm going to need to choose a VLAN for this. My management VLAN — 10.1.10.5 is part of the management VLAN, which is VLAN 10 — so I'm going to type in 10 for this right here, so I can get it onto that network.

The next question that I'm asked is what is the management interface port number. So what port on here? You can see that there's four ports already on here. What port do I want to use as the management interface? I'm just going to use port 1 for my management interface, so I'll hit enter on that.

Then it's asking for a management interface DHCP server IP address, and I will do 10.1.10.6. That's going to be the one I choose on here. I'm just going to choose one of the IP addresses on that network, so the next sequential one seems logical to me, so I'll hit that.

The next thing it'll ask for is a virtual gateway IP address. I have some of this information in here, so I'm going to select this virtual gateway. And a multicast address — I've come up with a multicast address, so I'm going to copy this and paste it into here. And the mobility RF group name, so I'm going to call this Mobility.

You may be asking, what do all of these mean? For the purpose of the CCNA you don't need to know all of the details with this. Quite a bit of this is not actually going to be tested on. You do need to know about how to do some configuration on the wireless controller, but not necessarily every single step of this, so that's why I'm breezing over some of this.

Network and Radio Settings

Same thing with the network SSID, which is the next thing that it's asking. So if we want to configure some sort of network ID on here — and yes, we do. What I'm going to call this is tks10. My initial gut reaction was to call this TKS management, or something along the management line, but I don't want to broadcast out to everyone that this is my management network. People are probably not going to know that this is part of VLAN 10, so I'm just going to call this tks10, and we'll hit enter on that.

Do we want to configure DHCP bridging mode? For this bridging mode, no, we're not going to do bridging mode for this, so I'm going to hit no. And then, allow static IP addresses: yes, we will allow static IP addresses.

Do I want to configure a RADIUS server? We will be covering what the RADIUS server is and how to set that up, but we're going to do that through the web interface, so I'm going to type in no for this one.

Then it asks for the country code, and we could type in help to see the list of countries. Since I'm in the US and that is the default, I'm going to hit enter on that one.

Next, do we want to enable 802.11b networks? We're going to say yes for this one as well. Do we want to enable a networks? Yes, we'll do that one. And auto configure Auto RF? Yes. We're just going to enable all of these for now. We could always go in later and disable some of these. Some of these are older technology — maybe I don't want 802.11b, because quite honestly sometimes when we enable these certain features it will actually slow all of the clients down. So I may want to go and change this later on, but for now I'm just going to get it all set up and running the way it is.

The next question is, do we want to configure an NTP server now? Yeah, let's go ahead and do that, so I'm going to hit enter. The address that I'm going to use is — I'm going to reference the core switch here, the layer 2 switch — so 10.1.10.1 is what we'll reference with that. And the interval for this: let's do 36000 for this, so I'll hit that.

Would you like to configure IPv6 parameters? At this point in time I'm not going to configure IPv6, so I'm going to type in no for this one. We don't want to do that at this point.

Is the configuration correct? If yes, the system will save it and reset. And yes.

Checking the Switch Port

It's reset and it's all booted up now. One thing to note is that I do have the interface number one, because that's what we specified, plugged into my core switch. If we want to see that, what I can do is I can pull this up and go, let's do a show run interface f a one zero zero 32, and I'm going to hit enter.

You can see that I have this set up as a trunk line. Its native VLAN is VLAN 2, and the trunks that are allowed — I've got them all allowed — and switchport mode trunk. So I've got this all set up now for this to be a trunk line, and that's what's plugged into port number one of my interface.

Logging In to the Web Interface

With that said, I've got the initial configuration all set up. Now let's see if it works. I'm going to bring up a browser and we're going to type in 10.1.10.5 and hit enter, and now we can see that the web interface for my wireless LAN controller comes up.

I'm going to click on login at this point, so I'll copy this, paste it into there, copy the password, paste it into there, and sign in.

These things — I usually don't like my usernames and passwords saved onto my computer or through the browser. I do it just from a security standpoint, so I'm going to X out of that. Now we can see we're into the wireless controller here, and I can start configuring the wireless controller.

We've gone through the initial setup and it is now up and running. It's not serving anything out — I don't have an access point connected to it, so it's not serving anything out. You can see here I've got access points, and it says zero.