Allied Telesis AT-WA7501, AT-WA7500 With access points that are acting as point-to-point bridges

AT-WA7500 and AT-WA7501 Installation and User’s Guide

with access points that are acting as point-to-point bridges.

Primary LAN Secondary LAN

Host

Root	Designated
	bridge

Figure 13. Access Points as Point-to-Point Bridges

Point-to-point bridges send data from end devices on the secondary LAN to the root access point via wireless hops. Wireless hops are formed when data from end devices move from one access point to another access point through the radio ports. The master radio in the point-to-point bridge on the primary LAN transmits hello messages, which allow the bridge on the secondary LAN to attach to the spanning tree in the same way as access points.

How many radios do you need in each access point?

ˆIf you have an 802.11a network, each access point only needs one radio.

ˆIf you have an 802.11g or 802.11b network and the access points are simply acting as point-to-point bridges, each access point only needs one radio.

ˆIf you have an 802.11g or 802.11b network and you want the designated bridge to also communicate with wireless end devices (point-to-multipoint), the designated bridge must have two radios. The designated bridge master radio must match the end device radios, and the station radio must match the root master radio.

Data from wireless end devices should not go through more than three wireless hops before it gets to an access point on the primary LAN.

You need to set the root priorities and secondary LAN bridge priorities for the bridge on the primary LAN and for the bridge on the secondary LAN:

ˆOn the primary LAN bridge, set the root priority to a number that is greater than the root priority of the secondary LAN bridge. The access points will not form a point-to-point bridge if the primary LAN bridge has a lower root priority than the secondary LAN bridge.

ˆOn the secondary LAN bridge, set the root priority to 0 and the secondary LAN bridge priority to a number other than 0.

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