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Cisco Wireless ISR and HWIC Access Point Configuration Guide
OL-6415-04
Chapter 8 Configuring VLANs
Configuring VLANs
Assigning Names to VLANs
You can assign a name to a VLAN in addition to its numerical ID. VLAN names can contain up to 32
ASCII characters. The access point stores each VLAN name and ID pair in a table.

Guidelines for Using VLAN Names

Keep these guidelines in mind when using VLAN names:
• The mapping of a VLAN name to a VLAN ID is local to each access point, so across your network,
you can assign the same VLAN name to a different VLAN ID.
Note If clients on your wireless LAN require seamless roaming, Cisco recommends that you assign
the same VLAN name to the same VLAN ID across all access points, or that you use only VLAN
IDs without names.
• Every VLAN configured on your access point must have an ID, but VLAN names are optional.
• VLAN names can contain up to 32 ASCII characters. However, a VLAN name cannot be a number
between 1 and 4095. For example, vlan4095 is a valid VLAN name, but 4095 is not. The access point
reserves the numbers 1 through 4095 for VLAN IDs.

Creating a VLAN Name

Beginning in privileged EXEC mode, follow these steps to assign a name to a VLAN:
Command Purpose
Step 1 configure terminal Enter global configuration mode.
Step 2 dot11 vlan-name name vlan vlan-id Assign a VLAN name to a VLAN ID. The name can contain up
to 32 ASCII characters.
Step 3 end Return to privileged EXEC mode.
Step 4 copy running-config startup-config (Optional) Save your entries in the configuration file.
Use the no form of the command to remove the name from the VLAN. Use the show dot11 vlan-name
privileged EXEC command to list all the VLAN name and ID pairs configured on the access point.
Using a RADIUS Server to Assign Users to VLANs
You can configure your RADIUS authentication server to assign users or groups of users to a specific
VLAN when they authenticate to the network.
Note Unicast and multicast cipher suites advertised in WPA information element (and negotiated during
802.11 association) may potentially mismatch with the cipher suite supported in an explicitly assigned
VLAN. If the RADIUS server assigns a new vlan ID which uses a different cipher suite from the
previously negotiated cipher suite, there is no way for the access point and client to switch back to the